Digital Id Startup Holonym Acquires Gitcoin Passport

Crypto’s “proof of humanity” sector noticed a significant merger on Monday with Holonym Basis buying Gitcoin Passport for an undisclosed sum of money and tokens.

The transaction unites two shut corporations: Holonym was already distributing its tech via Gitcoin Passport, a logbook the place 2 million web customers stash proof of personhood for companies that have to confirm they’re flesh and blood.

AI brokers aren’t individuals, however they might nicely fake as a lot when cash’s on the road. Holonym and Gitcoin are amongst a wave of crypto startups (most notably Sam Altman’s Worldcoin) constructing methods to sift out the bots.

Gitcoin Passport will rebrand to Human Passport and eight of its workers will proceed on at Holonym, now 30 robust, mentioned CEO Shady El Damaty. He is planning to make the digital passport extra transportable so it could actually “observe you wherever you go on the web,” performing the id checks essential to conduct enterprise on the net.

First comes the privateness issue. A part of the attraction of flashing one’s Gitcoin Passport over, say, a authorities ID is that the crypto passport can attest its holder is who they declare to be with out really revealing their id.

That is not altering with the merger; El Damaty mentioned it is getting a lift. The almost 35 million credentials being saved on Passport will likely be upgraded with zero-knowledge proof expertise.

Maybe the best-known use case for proof of humanity tech in crypto comes with airdrops. Initiatives that search to make sure their token launches are rewarding individuals, not bots, have typically turned to instruments like these. Holonym’s helped safe $225 million in such distributions, El Damaty mentioned.

However he is additionally planning to accomplice with extra humanitarian endeavors, like digital id checkers for refugees in want of accessing monetary assist. One coming undertaking will plug into 1 million displaced individuals.

The acquisition might bolster Holonym’s capability to problem Worldcoin, which leads the id pack by advantage of its affiliation with OpenAI’s Sam Altman. “We’re positioning ourselves as an alternative choice to Worldcoin,” mentioned El Damaty.