The world of decentralised identity management has been shaken up with news that Holonym Foundation is acquiring Gitcoin Passport. The deal will forge the world’s largest Proof of Humanity solution, leaving Worldcoin’s own benchmark in the shade and surpassing its identity proofs by a factor of 3x. human.tech, as the new initiative is known, has 34.5 million zero-knowledge (ZK) credentials and inherits 2.1M existing Gitcoin Passport users under a new banner called Human Passport.
Holonym Foundation sees Gitcoin Passport and its user base as a natural fit for its Human Key technology. Merging the two gives rise to Human Passport, dedicated to secure and private identity verification.
The move has been welcomed by figures on both sides of the deal, with Gitcoin Passport Founder Kevin Owocki promising that “Passport is evolving into something even greater: an identity layer that champions human dignity, privacy, and verifiable trust.”
Data Without The Drawbacks
In shifting away from traditional data-collection models, Human Passport follows an ethos of minimal personal disclosure. It’s a stance that the crypto industry is only too willing to get behind: proving authenticity without sacrificing privacy.
Given Gitcoin Passport’s reputation for mitigating Sybil attacks and $200 million worth of airdrops secured by its identity checks, the combination of Gitcoin’s track record with Holonym’s crypto-infrastructure could be a game-changer for Sybil resistance and onchain reputation.
Beyond controlling Sybil attacks, the human.tech reputation system Holonym is pioneering can influence governance, reputation scoring for DeFi lending, and even cross-chain collaborations. If web3 is to achieve its promise of a fairer, more inclusive internet, solutions like Human Passport have a pivotal role to play. Human Passport is just the beginning.
In an era where digital identity is increasingly weaponised for surveillance and control, Human Passport aims to power a future where technology serves humanity, not the other way around.
New Name, Same Service
Traditional user-verification solutions often rely on collecting sensitive personal data; information that can be vulnerable to hacking or surveillance.
By integrating zero-knowledge proofs, Human Passport aims to confirm that a user is human without revealing identity specifics. This fundamental shift protects personal data while ensuring online interactions remain trustworthy.
Under the terms of the deal, Gitcoin Passport will fully rebrand as Human Passport. The newly formed identity protocol will act as a cornerstone of human.tech, Holonym Foundation’s suite of tools and services designed to advance personal autonomy in finance and authentication. The potential applications for this tech extend wider still; enterprises, both in crypto and TradFi, are interested in leveraging decentralised identity for secure authentication.
At present, there’s something of a divide between web2 and web2 users in terms of the verification systems they’re comfortable with using. Web2 users; most of whom have never even heard of the term “web2” are familiar with email and password-based login.
Web3 users are also familiar with this system, but generally feel more comfortable using decentralised identities to authenticate, based on the same cryptographic proofs that secure web wallets.
There’s plenty of business for Human Passport to soak up in web3 for now. But in the long-term, there’s a whole lot more of the web to be cornered if human.tech can prove itself and start making inroads into traditional digital industries.
