Delaware, United States, August 16, 2024, Chainwire
Led by Finality Capital and Paper Ventures, with participation from Arrington Capital, Draper Dragon, Lightshift and others.
Holonym Foundation, an organization building the next generation of digital identity security for the decentralized web, announces the completion of a successful $5.5 million seed funding round. The funding round was led by Finality Capital and Paper Ventures, with significant participation from Draper Dragon, Arrington Capital, Lightshift, Zero Knowledge Ventures, Zero DAO, and other notable funds.
Shady El Damaty, co-founder of Holonym, said: “We are incorporating core, people-first principles into the technology we send out into the world. Our goal is to create a global, open-source layer that empowers every citizen with basic access to a digital identity using cryptography to prove their identity.”
“We cannot have sovereign control of our monetary assets without a sovereign identity. The Holonym Foundation is building critical middleware and applications that will make Web3 users the envy of Web2 users by giving them the power to own, govern, and selectively share their data with strong privacy and security guarantees. Holonym will be part of the solution to bring the next trillion dollars of assets onto the blockchain,” said Kamal Mokeddem, GP at Finality Capital.
Cryptographic keys, or private keys, power the web and secure all digital interactions on the internet. But what if private keys could be created differently and in a more sophisticated way? Human keys completely change the way private keys are derived. Instead of creating private keys from random phrases, human keys turn humans into keys. This new framework shifts ownership of digital assets from the holder of a random seed to the human who can uniquely prove their biometrics. Human keys make the layers of internet ownership built on top of them more consumer-friendly, decentralized, and secure.
Human Keys encompasses three protocols created by the Holonym Foundation, all of which have robust data security and privacy systems as core principles:
- Mishti Network, a novel threshold entropy network that computes an oblivious pseudorandom function (OPRF) on biometric data.
- This allows humans to derive secure random keys that are difficult to steal and unlocks private homomorphic computation on encrypted data, allowing untrusted third parties to authenticate users without ever seeing the underlying data.
- This is an actively validated service (AVS) on Eigenlayer with cryptoeconomic mechanisms that leverage the economic security of the network.
- Zeronym, a zero-knowledge identity protocol, leverages human keys to allow anyone in the world to secretly prove facts about their identity.
- Over 125,000 pseudonymous Zeronym users around the world have already unlocked these rights, proving their unique personality, residency, and other attributes to create a rich digital reputation that only they own and control.
- Silk, a simple and elegant wallet user interface for interacting with crypto protocols.
- Human keys can be used in the real world for the everyday Internet user with Silk.
- Silk provides advanced security tools to protect users from hackers, scams, and malware on the decentralized web.
Nanak Nihal Singh Khalsa, co-founder of Holonym, said: “Humanity is not just about biometric data, such as your face. It is about what you have, what you know, and who you are – your property, your memory, and your body. In today’s centralized web, we are giving free ownership to our data. Web3 should be the space where we provide strong data ownership and secure sharing of personality, so that no one can own your data except you.”
By giving every human in the world a secure key that only they can possess and control, the Holonym Foundation is moving toward global digital inclusion, precisely at a time when advances in artificial intelligence are on the verge of leaving many behind.
Shady El Damaty, co-founder of Holonym, says this is just the beginning for the Holonym Foundation. “Human Keys will redefine the way citizens interact with the internet by limiting excess power and strengthening individual rights with resilient decentralized protocols based on Zeronym and Mishti Network.”
The Holonym Foundation focuses on applied cryptography innovation that provides solutions to real-world problems.
About the Holonym Foundation
The Holonym Foundation's mission is to proliferate human keys to make security and privacy more usable in zero-trust environments. The Holonym Foundation has developed an infrastructure that enables anyone, anywhere, to create human keys with the Mishti Network, easily use them with Silk, and privately prove facts about their identity with Zeronym.
Holonym Foundation Products
Red Mishti. A threshold network for zero-trust human key derivation. Create high-entropy human keys from private biometrics, passwords, security questions, or other data that humans can remember. Mishti also powers Zeronym's programmable privacy for on-chain private banking, payments, and other real-world regulated industries.
Silk. The human-friendly wallet for instant onboarding. Use Human Keys with zero-trust protocols to store, send payments, access global financial internet protocols, and manage your private data. Silk is a self-custody protected wallet that can be recovered without trusted guardians.
Zeronym. Personality and private identity test. Fast client-side privacy for identity verification, supporting digital credentials from 180 countries. Use human keys to privately prove any fact without revealing any zero-knowledge information. Enterprises can use Zeronym for privacy-preserving KYC/AML with programmable privacy for continuous monitoring.
CONTACT AND SOCIAL NETWORKS
For PR inquiries, users can contact [email protected]
Users can stay connected with Holonym Foundation and its products:
