Is there any anonymity in Proof-of-Authority?

Question

According to the following article,

Proof_of_Authority (PoA) is a modified form of Proof_of_stake (PoS) where instead of stake with the monetary value, a validator’s identity performs the role of stake. In this context, identity means the correspondence between a validator’s personal identification on the platform with officially issued documentation for the same person, i.e. certainty that a validator is exactly who that person represents to be.

Article Link

If so, is everybody able to know personal information of a validator like first and last name as a validator ? And if so, we can say that there is no anonymity in Proof_of_Authority?

And this does not affect decision of validators to decide about transactions confirmation ?

Answer 1

Your assumption is not true.

Naturally you can give somebody, who you do not know, technical permission to run proof-of-authority node in your network. There is nothing technical preventing it. You identity these parties by their public keys or IP addresses.

However I do not understand how one would be able to evaluate the reputation of honesty of these parties to gain sufficient trust to give them right to produce blocks and transactions.

Giving those rights to a random unknown person would be just risky to the point it would be seen stupid.

The article only discusses matters in the context of promoting their own business, so I suggest some criticism towards it.

Answer 2

Signers/sealers need to disclose there identity in case of private ethereum blockchain with Proof of Authority (PoA) consensus mechanism. All the participants except sealers need not to disclose their identity. They can remain anonymous. They just need to agree that these will be sealers(known identities) for participating in network.