---
title: "Proof of Personhood Reference"
description: "Reference for Polkadot's Proof of Personhood infrastructure — Ring-VRF and aliases, plus per-pallet documentation for the pallets that gate logic on personhood."
categories: "Apps, Reference"
url: "https://developers.polkadot.com/reference/apps/infrastructure/pop/"
word_count: 457
token_estimate: 964
version_hash: "sha256:0293018c1f68050b39098380f0a54c0c7043f5d1df6f0e0b7040b45d23e04add"
last_updated: "2026-11-13T11:04:04+00:00"
---

# Proof of Personhood

## Introduction

Proof of Personhood (PoP) is Polkadot's privacy-preserving way to confirm a user is a real human, without exposing _which_ human. A user completes PoP once (in the [Polkadot App](/reference/apps/hosts/polkadot-app/)); from then on, a single proof unlocks personhood-gated features — the TestNet faucet, short `.dot` names, alias-gated checks inside a Polkadot Product, and on-chain payments routed through personhood-aware pallets.

For a Product developer, PoP shows up in two places:

- **As a primitive your Product calls into**: Through the Product SDK your Product requests an alias for the current user, has the user prove control of that alias against a challenge, and gates features on the result. The Polkadot App is where the proving happens; your Product never sees the underlying biometric or the user's identity record.
- **As a runtime origin your Product dispatches under**: Polkadot's PoP pallets accept calls under the `under_alias` origin, so your Product can submit on-chain operations that resolve to the user's alias inside the called pallet — pallet state stays unlinkable to the underlying account.

This reference is organized into two halves: the mechanism (Ring-VRF, aliases, the unlinkability property, how `under_alias` works) on its own page, and per-pallet reference for the pallets a Product is most likely to dispatch into.

## The Mechanism

[Ring-VRF and Aliases](/reference/apps/infrastructure/pop/ring-vrf-and-aliases/) is the conceptual deep dive: how the PoP cryptography produces unlinkable per-Product aliases, what `under_alias` is at the runtime layer, and the privacy property the whole stack delivers.

## The Pallets

| Pallet                                                                   | What It Covers                                                                                                                        |
|--------------------------------------------------------------------------|---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|
| [`pallet-people`](/reference/apps/infrastructure/pop/pallet-people/)     | Personhood registration, alias-issuing, and the `under_alias` runtime origin. The foundational pallet the rest of the set depends on. |
| [`pallet-game`](/reference/apps/infrastructure/pop/pallet-game/)         | Personhood-gated on-chain games and randomized selection flows.                                                                       |
| [`pallet-score`](/reference/apps/infrastructure/pop/pallet-score/)       | Personhood-anchored reputation and scoring primitives.                                                                                |
| [`pallet-identity`](/reference/apps/infrastructure/pop/pallet-identity/) | The identity record on People Chain associated with a PoP account.                                                                    |
| [`pallet-ubc`](/reference/apps/infrastructure/pop/pallet-ubc/)           | Universal Basic Capacity — the per-person on-chain capacity primitives.                                                               |
| [`pallet-coinage`](/reference/apps/infrastructure/pop/pallet-coinage/)   | The personhood-aware peer-to-peer payment surface behind the App's Coinage feature.                                                   |

## Where to Go Next

<div class="grid cards">

- **Ring-VRF and Aliases**

    ---

    The cryptographic and runtime mechanism — how PoP produces unlinkable per-Product aliases, what `under_alias` is, and the privacy property the whole stack delivers.

    [→ Reference](/reference/apps/infrastructure/pop/ring-vrf-and-aliases/)

- **pallet-people**

    ---

    The foundational pallet of the PoP set — registration, alias-issuing, and the `under_alias` runtime origin.

    [→ Reference](/reference/apps/infrastructure/pop/pallet-people/)

</div>