Hardening Digital Natural Rights through Crypto Economic Security 

Mishti Network's launch on Symbiotic represents a pivotal moment for decentralizing and fortifying Human Key Infrastructure. This advancement ensures that rights to privacy, security, and personhood are resilient and immutable by embedding them as core functions within a decentralized network. Symbiotic's programmable shared security model provides additional redundancy to ensure that Human Key derivation maintains a high up-time, allowing anyone connected to the internet to create a self-custodial cryptography key from their human attributes.

The network’s core technology—the threshold Verifiable Oblivious Pseudorandom Function (tVOPRF)—enables human-friendly private key derivation, addressing key privacy and functionality challenges. This innovation makes zero-knowledge identity practical for real-world applications, eliminating vulnerabilities associated with centralized identity systems prone to breaches and mass surveillance. Symbiotic’s robust shared security ensures that sensitive data is processed with maximum reliability, enabling the network to scale securely.

Holonym’s Human Keys allow anyone to derive cryptographic keys from what they have, what they know, or what they are, through a decentralized vOPRF threshold network. This eliminates single points of failure and simplifies self-custody without the complexity associated with seed phrases or physical hardware. By making Human Key Infrastructure accessible to everyday users, Mishti Network sets a new standard in usability and security for decentralized identity.

Given the sensitivity of tVOPRF computations on human data, centralized servers or poorly designed systems pose significant risks. Mishti’s reliance on Symbiotic’s shared security model ensures robust defenses against these vulnerabilities. The combination of capital efficiency, decentralized collateralization, and high-security standards solidifies its foundational infrastructure.

Beyond deriving Human Keys, the network makes these keys programmable for self sovereign identity. Programming privacy at a smart contract level addresses the core issues of legacy identity systems like mass surveillance and data breaches, while striking a crucial balance. All user data remains encrypted by default, but can be verifiably revealed based on predefined smart contract conditions to prevent abuse of anonymity. For these use cases, decentralization through shared security models are vital to maintaining integrity and censorship resistance for real world use cases. 

Human Keys are designed for scalability, enabling applications like legal personhood proofs, peer-to-peer payments, and civic engagement. By eliminating traditional barriers to access, Mishti Network democratizes cryptography, offering a scalable and efficient alternative to centralized systems. Symbiotic’s shared security model plays a key role in this scalability. By leveraging decentralized infrastructure and advanced cryptographic primitives, Mishti ensures its network can support millions of users while maintaining the highest levels of efficiency and security.

Mishti Network simplifies cryptographic key creation through familiar authentication methods, such as passwords, social logins, government IDs, and security questions. This human-centric design enables universal access and self-custody without the complexity of seed phrases. Using tVOPRF, keys can be derived and recovered seamlessly across devices, providing a user-friendly approach to cryptographic security.

Mishti enables users to encrypt sensitive data while proving its integrity. Smart contracts define precise conditions for decryption, ensuring data remains private and secure. Even if stakeholders are compromised, the network’s capture-resistant architecture prevents unauthorized access, aligning privacy with product and jurisdictional needs.

Zero-knowledge identity protocols rely on nullifiers to prevent double-spending and traceability. Mishti’s cryptographic primitives provide decentralized and privacy-preserving nullifiers, ensuring secure identity verification without compromising decentralization. This innovation enhances the integrity of zk identity systems while maintaining scalability and resistance to collusion.

The Mishti Network’s launch on Symbiotic is a significant leap forward for decentralized identity infrastructure. By combining advanced cryptographic technology with Symbiotic’s shared security, Mishti lays the foundation for a scalable, secure, and privacy-preserving digital identity ecosystem. This partnership transforms the vision of self-sovereign identity into a practical reality, empowering individuals with control over their digital lives.

Mishti is a protocol built by Holonym and is a threshold network for zero-trust Human Key derivation, enabling secure programmable privacy for financial services and regulated industries.

Human Keys are human-friendly cryptographic keys generated from what you have, what you are, or what you know. They grant you control over your digital assets while being easily recoverable and highly secure against hacks.

“Empowering privacy and security with Human Keys is not just our mission; it’s a necessity to scale the web3 ethos.” — Shady El Damaty, CEO & Co-Founder of Holonym

As we kick off 2025, we’re taking a moment to reflect on the progress we made in 2024 in advancing privacy-focused solutions through improved protocols, new partnerships, and community engagement. Thank you for joining us on the journey.

Here’s a recap of our Q4 highlights!

Holonym Team Gathers In Person for the First Time: Much of the Holonym team took advantage of a series of events in Bangkok, Thailand to come together for the first time in person! We explored the city, made invaluable connections with other teams, and shared in great conversation and planning for the year ahead.

Big Year for Holonym: The identity protocol minted 75,000 + ZK identity proofs in 2024, summing to a total of 150,000+ private credentials that have been created to date.  These numbers reflect the product improvements introduced in v3, enabling fast, scalable ZK proofs on client devices.

Serious Capital is Backing Mishti Network: $1.4B in Re-staked ETH has been committed to Mishti Network from reputable operators. Excited to learn more about how Mishti works? Check out CTO & Co-Founder Nanak Nihal Khalsa’s Ethereum Research forum post.

ZK for everyone: Holonym has open-sourced the VOLE-based zero-knowledge prover optimized for consumer devices and scalability to enable practical privacy solutions like instant NFC passport verification and private biometric processing.

Human Keys are Catching On: Holonym’s Human Keys are human-friendly cryptographic keys derived from what you have, what you know, or what you are. The technology recently made the Coinmarketcap Glossary, marking a key moment of adoption.

Holonym demonstrated its commitment to embedding technology with a humanistic ethos by sponsoring a major hackathon at Funding The Commons in Thailand, demonstrating how privacy-preserving tech can solve real-world problems.

• Best use case of Holonym’s stack - Refunite Network empowers over 175 million displaced populations and Africa’s refugees through the Relay Network, enabling community leaders to self-manage roles in a decentralized trust network. The Hackathon project made strides to deploy self-custodial keys and zero knowledge identity using Silk for two-click onboarding, and Zeronym for Proof of Personhood. 

• Identity Track - Refugee Identity Issuer submitted a decentralized solution for verifying and documenting refugee identities using zero-knowledge proofs, leveraging the Silk SDK to create proofs on Zeronym.

• Peer to Peer Payments track - CompensateFtc is a payroll dApp on Ethrereum, powered by Silk for account creation and Zeronym for ZK ID and compliance. 

• Unstoppable Civics track - Trufy is a decentralized voting tool for DAOs, with Zeronym enabling one person one vote, and underlying identity primitives for building reputation.

Human Keys in mainstream media: Our human-intrinsic approach to digital security gained recognition in major publications, including CoinDesk, Dataconomy, and Blockster.

Interview on Digital Rights: Shady discussed the intersection of privacy and security in an interview with TheStreet.

Feature on DeFi Security Challenges: Nanak shared insights on how Holonym’s 2PC technology can mitigate the $2.4B lost to DeFi hacks in 2024.

Chain Abstraction and Intents Day: Shady’s keynote on Silk’s 2-Party Multi Party Computation garnered attention from devs during Chain Abstraction and Intents Day. Silk is the first consumer wallet to leverage this novel primitive, which provides a decentralized infrastructure for key management and programmable transactions.

Op-Ed for the Observer:  Shady discussed the significance of embedding natural digitals right into the digital infrastructure in his piece, “The Attention Economy: Power, Profit, and Privacy in the Digital Era”

Op-Ed for Crypto.News: Shady discussed AI risks in scientific research and how decentralized solutions like Human Keys can mitigate these issues in his piece, “From lab to ledger: Human keys secure scientific integrity”

A heartfelt thank you to the media for supporting us throughout 2024 and helping us share our story with the Web3 community and beyond. In 2025, we’re focused on bringing people closer to Holonym’s ethos and sharing the world we’re building—one driven by Humanistic Technology, where innovation serves humanity in a digital-first future. We’re excited to keep you in the loop as this vision unfolds!

🔗 Read more: Media Highlights

• Open-Sourced VOLE-Based ZK Prover: Holonym open-sourced the VOLE based ZK prover, built for scalable identity verification on consumer-grade devices. 

• Partnership with Talent Protocol: Integrated zero-knowledge credentials for secure job-seeker verification.

• Proof of Clean Hands: Product developments are nearing production ready status to launch PCH for Aztec’s testnet launch and to power compliant identity verification for Thrive protocol’s grants program. 

• ZK NFC on Apple:ZK NFC Verification launches on Apple App Store, following its earlier Android release. It’s Free! 

  
  🔗 Explore Zeronym’s tech: 

Silk

@silkysignon

Meet Silk Wallet: the human-friendly wallet designed to offer top-tier security without compromising a great user experience. Built for self-custody, it protects users while staying easy to use.

A new paradigm for onboarding in web3

31

7:48 PM • Dec 6, 2024

• Silk is Decentralizing! Key derivation from social accounts, and soon biometrics, will now be powered by the Mishti Network Restricted Mainnet, marking a significant milestone in the decentralization of the protocol.

  

• New Features & Updates:

  • Cross-chain swaps for frictionless asset movement across any chain.

  • Cross-chain gas tank, enabling smooth transactions across chains without needing gas tokens for every network. Pay fees directly from your balance.

  • Human Key derivation with Phone Number to create a self-custodial wallet.

  • Human Key derivation with ORCID ID, the academic credential for 20M+ academics

• Early Developer Feedback: Positive reviews highlight the wallet’s intuitive UI/UX and robust security!

• Hexens Audit Review: Hexens completed an audit of Silk Wallet, including its integration with 2PC technology. This review highlighted Holonym's innovative approach to security and privacy in the crypto space. Read the full report here.

🔗 Discover Silk Wallet: website

🔗 Read the latest blog posts: blog

• Proactive Security: Mishti Network implemented Forward-Secret Public Key Encryption (FSPKE) to reinforce security by preventing historical message decryption even if nodes are compromised. Read more in the white paper. 

• Recognition in Eigenlayer Ecosystem: Named a leading project in EigenLayer’s Season 2 stakedrop, showcasing the impact of Mishti Network on advanced and applied cryptography to real-world use cases.

• Infrastructure Growth: Several reputed operators were onboarded for testnet including Luganodes, Hashkey, P2P, InfraSingularity, Pier Two, Blockscape, Moonli, Coinage/DAIC, TokenTraxx, Aestus, BwareLabs (Alchemy) and AllNodes. 

• Restricted Mainnet: Mishti has added an additional sub-net to stage features for testing before moving them to Mainnet. Special shout to Moonli and Zero Computing for supporting us on the subnet.

  🔗 Learn about Mishti Network: website

  Partnerships

• Mishti Network x Renzo Protocol: Renzo Protocol restakes $800M in restaked ETH to strengthen Mishti Network.

• Kelp DAO x Holonym: Reinforced additional security to Mishti network by restaking  $670M in ETH to secure Human Keys

• Reclaim Protocol x Mishti Network: Reclaim Protocol is collaborating with Mishti Network to derive keys from Social Security Numbers using Holonym’s OPRF.

Humans-Only Rooftop Pool Party: An exclusive pool party hosted for our community members who attended Devcon or its side events.

ZK Dining: Holonym organized a dinner for partners and friends, offering a stunning 360-degree sunset view by the river.

• ETH Milan: Shady discussed how AI-generated content was undermining scientific authenticity and human creativity. He presented Human Key Infrastructure as a solution to restore trust in digital identities.

  

  Shady El Damaty, Ph.D

  @hebbianloop

  

  science is over. you can write a convincing primary research article in <10m now with aithor
  
  @ethmilano i gave a talk on why this is a disaster for truth, human creativity, and scientific progress and how Human Key Infra will save science via #DeSci
  
  talk recap & demo

  

  29

  6:41 PM • Oct 8, 2024

• ZK Hub Bangkok: Hosted the Human Keys Lounge, featuring ZK Trivia contest, and discussions on biometrics-based key derivation and wallet security. Nanak presented “The Human Key Problem” examining the tradeoffs and solutions related to digital identity.

  

  House of ZK

  @HouseofZK

  

  The @Zk_Hub_Global main stage presentation by @NanakNihal, Co-Founder of @0xHolonym, is now available on the @HouseofZK YouTube channel: youtube.com/watch?v=MThaO2…
  
  Nanak presented 'The Human Key Problem', examining the tradeoffs and solutions related to digital identity

  

  97

  1:14 PM • Dec 16, 2024

• Funding the Commons Hackathon: Holonym sponsored Humanitarian aid and digital rights hackathon with Funding the commons  with a $15K prize pool for real world solutions, including privacy-preserving refugee verification systems.

  

  Funding The Commons

  @FundingCommons

  

  The biggest challenges of our time—climate, financial inclusion, privacy, and the stewardship of our commons—demand collaboration.
  
  In Thailand, 1,000+ builders, funders, and researchers united to share ideas & build systems that serve us all. Thanks for being a part of it!

  

  81

  9:06 PM • Dec 2, 2024

• Funding the Commons Talk: Shady presented Human Key technology and the role of its infrastructure in fostering human flourishing, security, and privacy in the digital age.

  

• Bangkok Design Jam: Holonym joined the Design jam and in-person hackathon hosted by Funding The Commons. The team provided mentorship and participated in workshops. 

  

• Abstraction & Intent day:  Shady delivered a key note during Chain Abstraction & Intents Day about Wallets as a Protocol with 2 Party Computation.

• Staking Rewards Summit:  Mishti Network had its own booth at the summit, allowing deeper engagement with the restaking community.

  

  Mishti Network

  @mishtinetwork

  

  Mishti is live at @StakingRewards Summit! We can answer all your questions about Hooman Keys
  
  Come get some limited edition swag. Mishti tattoos for the most devoted <3

  

  4

  8:55 AM • Nov 8, 2024

• Staking Summit Pitch contest: Shady and Nanak gave a pitch on Mishti Network, and missed 1st place by just 1 point (!!!), showcasing it as an innovative AVS on Eigenayer.

  

• Ethereum Cypherpunk Congress: Shady delivered a key note expanding the notion behind digital identity.

  

• ZK ID Working Group: The team joined a workshop hosted by PSE for ZK identity protocols, to discuss some of the core problems and potential solutions within ZK identity. 

  

Web3 Marketing Hackathon: Holonym sponsored the first Web3 marketing hackathon to create awareness around Human Digital Rights. Winners include ‘Your Voice, Your Privacy’ a privacy-focused awareness campaign, a social media initiative leveraging Holonym’s stack, and ‘The Keys to Digital Freedom’, an article highlighting Holonym’s human-centric approach to digital identity.

• Zeronym Advancements: Launch Proof of Clean Hands out of beta for on-chain KYC/AML use cases, and deploy Zeronym for real world use cases that intersect with crypto. 

• Mishti Network Mainnet Launch: Strengthening Mishti’s decentralized infrastructure with new staking partners and launching on EigenLayer and Symbiotic.

• Hardening The Human Digital Rights Movement: Holonym will continue to work closely with external stakeholders and human righst organizations to raise awareness and implement its decentralized tools for resilient coordination mechanisms and privacy-preserving digital infrastructure.

  ---

As we step into 2025, we remain committed to advancing privacy, security, and digital human rights through our Human Keys technology. We’re excited to have you with us on this journey.

Join the conversation and explore more: follow on X, BlueSky, LinkedIn

Talent Protocol is an open, verifiable professional reputation system for the web3 ecosystem. With over one million Talent Passports issued, Talent Protocol enables builders to aggregate diverse reputation data points, forming a Builder Score that reflects their onchain credibility. Credentials are categorized into skills, activity, and identity. While activity and identity are capped to establish a baseline reputation, skills credentials remain uncapped, allowing for a more inclusive representation of a builder's talents. This uncapped approach ensures that skills can be recognized across various ecosystems without being limited by predefined prerequisites, enabling dApps and organizations to identify talent that aligns closely with specific needs and objectives.

Zeronym, a zero knowledge identity protocol built by the Holonym, allows anyone to secretly prove facts with concealed identity. Builders can prove their identity either via government-issued IDs or NFC-compatible passports, with the ZKPs generated on their device in a few seconds. Verified users join an anonymity set, or identity mixer, of over 125,000 members, confirming their identity by demonstrating set membership and thus ensuring privacy.

Zeronym is universally accessible, due to the widespread availability of digital IDs. It provides rigorous sybil resistance and privacy-preserving properties by unlinking off-chain attributes from on-chain addresses. The protocol enables instant, client-side zero-knowledge proofs, conveniently accessible through Silk, a new paradigm shift in onboarding people to crypto self-custody.

Holding a Zeronym SBT significantly boosts your Gitcoin Passport score, as the stamp is among the highest-scoring stamps available. Once identity verification is complete, Zeronym also posts attestations on both the Verax and Sign protocol. This provides additional benefits and access to services within the Linea ecosystem through Verax, and unlocks airdrop opportunities and other perks across EVM and other chains via Sign Protocol.

Sign Up and Verify

If you’re a builder who hasn’t yet secured a Talent Protocol Passport, now’s the perfect time to sign up and get yourself in a rich social graph of reputed builders. Already on Talent Protocol? You can still boost your identity score and unlock even more benefits by verifying with Zeronym.

Human Keys for Everyone!

We believe technology should be built in with natural digital rights for privacy, security and ownership. We invented Human Keys to make these digital rights as immutable and resilient as the underlying decentralized infrastructure that powers it.

We’re excited to proliferate the adoption of Human Keys in partnership with Funding the Commons. that Holonym will be sponsoring a month-long hackathon with Funding the Commons and Earth Commons.

Holonym will provide developer support and up to $15,000 in rewards for the hackathon. The event will bring together builders from around the world to develop innovative solutions for public goods funding that utilize privacy, key security, and identity technology.

The hackathon will be a hybrid in-person/remote event that runs from October 7 to November 7. The winners of the hackathon challenges will be announced at the conference on November 8th and 9th.

Hackathon participants will work closely with the Holonym dev team to build solutions at the intersection of crypto and real world. Developers will be challenged to submit solutions in the privacy & identity track:

• Challenge 1: Universal Personhood Issuer ($7,000) - How do we prove personhood of an undocumented refugee? Utilize Zeronym and the Silk SDKs to create a "Refugee Identity Issuer" that allows undocumented individuals in refugee camps to prove that they are a unique human with specific status (such as a verified refugee at a camp). Bonus points for extending this beyond refugee status.

• Challenge 2: Simple Remittances & P2P Payments ($3,000, x2) - Sending payments with crypto should be easier than opening a bank account. Utilize the Silk wallet in a dApp to 1) onboard users with socials or email, 2) onramp with no KYC, 3) receive/send payments via text/email. Bonus points for novel applications utilizing other DeFi primitives, activations over web2 platforms, tested in the wild with real world impact.

• Challenge 3: Unstoppable Civic Infrastructure ($2000) - How do we build resilient systems for voting, crowdfunding, direct aid, and coordination by people around the world? Utilize any of Holonym's technology to build unstoppable civic infrastructure that can empower people to persist in collective governance even when IRL institutions malfunction.

Now that we’ve shared the exciting news, let’s dive into the updates from Q3

ETHCC 2024 Participation
The Holonym team was excited to meet the community in Brussels from July 8-11! We hosted insightful panels and exclusive events focused on Zero Trust Wallets, ZK Identity, and programmable privacy. 

Key Events:

• July 8: Encrypt_xyz

• July 8: shared_security

• July 9: ETHCC BIA

• July 11: AVS Day by Consensys

Keynote Presentations

• Shady El Damaty from Holonym spoke on shared security and its potential to enhance secure computation during the Shared Security panel.

  

• On July 9, Shady El Damaty, gave a pitch at the BNB Incubation Alliance (BIA) hosted by BNBCHAIN and BinanceLabs. The event fueled some great interactions and supports the growth of early-stage projects.

  

• Nanak Nihal shared updates on Holonym’s Personhood AVS and advancements within the Mishti Network during AVS Day, hosted by Consensys and Eigenlayer.

  

Holonym Sybil Defense Quest Winners:
Congratulations to our winners! Thank you to all participants for your engagement. Prizes were randomly selected from the top 100 participants.
More Info Here

Launch Announcement
We’re LIVE! The Proof of Personhood attestation on Verax using Zeronym is now available, featuring a $3000 prize pool! Celebrate this partnership by joining our special Galxe quest for a chance to earn your personhood attestation.
Join the Quest

Silk SDK Update
The Silk SDK is user-friendly, catering to both experienced Web3 developers and newcomers to self-custody wallets and cryptography. Embed in 3 mins!!

Integrate Silk effortlessly by following our documentation for optimal performance: Silk Integration Guide

New Collaboration
Big news! Hinkal will integrate Zeronym for identity verification through Proof of Clean Hands. This integration marks a significant improvement in private transactions by ensuring audit trails for illicit activities, and enabling honest users to keep their information private and unlinkable to wallet addresses. Zeronym is one of the leading zkKYC solutions and has over 125k verified users.

To further highlight the partnership, the teams hosted an AMA with hexagate and mystri_eth.
Link to AMA

Holonym Foundation has secured $5.5M in seed funding to advance global digital personhood through Human Keys

We're focusing on scaling our core protocols that serve the proliferation of Human Keys— Mishti Network, Zeronym, and Silk  — to put privacy, autonomy, digital identity, and access to unstoppable financial infra in the palms of every human.
Read the amazing news here

Discussion on the ZTP Ecosystem:
NanakNihal, discussed their early entry into the ZTP ecosystem. Learn how Silk leveraged Pera’s 2PC-MPC for trustless multi factor authentication and account recovery, while maintaining security and decentralisation. Watch the discussion here.

Lowering Issuer Fees
The Holonym Foundation has significantly reduced issuer fees for ID verification with Zero-Knowledge Proofs (ZKPs).
New Fee Structure

• Standard government ID proofs are now $5.

• ZK NFC proofs are free, eliminating payment friction.
  We are committed to making our services more globally accessible!

Holonym Trivia Weekly

Every Sunday at 9 PM HKT on Discord. Prizes: $100, $60, $40.

Format: 10 trivia questions, top scorers win!

Exclusive "Holo Geek" role for winners.

Prepare by checking out:

Holonym Documentation

Silk Documentation

FAQs on the Holonym Foundation Discord server

Mishti’s landing page is live!!

The community voted it as the best landing page Gmeowahaha!!

See the voting results here.

Ethereum Research Forum

Nanak Nihal published “A Threshold Network for Human Keys” on Ethereum’s research forum. 

The post delves into how “Human Keys” can solve Ethereum’s privacy and onboarding challenge. 

Introduction of Human Keys

DeComputeConf & token2049

Louis Tajan, our cryptographer introduced Human Keys to the world for the first time, live and in person!
Missed the talk or have questions about threshold biometric key derivation? Reach out to us—we’d love to chat!
Learn more here: mishti.network

Circom Programming Class by Nanak Nihal

Nanak Nihal held a class on ZK Programming using Circom at zkMonk's ZK Bootcamp  on  September 22, 2024

Eth Milano
Our Co-Founder Shady El Damaty  presented Human Keys at Eth Milano. 

On Day 1, he spoke about human-friendly wallets and how Eigen Layer is paving the way for secure decentralized authentication. 

On Day 2, he discussed how to manage cryptographic keys securely through personal attributes, enabling easy key recovery and privacy-preserving identity verification without compromising sensitive information.

Holonym

@0xHolonym

The future of our society will depend on our ability to differentiate truth, verify authenticity, and prove humanity. Human Keys provide creatives with the tools they need to stand out against the sludge of AI generated content. Thank you @eth_milano and @ResearchHub for hosting

29

20:41 • 27 Sept 2024

We will be sharing a recap of the talks soon. Stay tuned!

Become a Holonym Ambassador!

• Opportunity: Help shape the future of digital privacy with Human Keys.

• Apply Now: Ambassador Program

Join our community on Discord for more details

Trivia Contest

Prize Pool: $200. 15 trivia questions and bonus questions on Sunday. Join via Discord.

AMA with Sign Protocol on Sybil Resistance and Airdrops Featuring Shady El Damaty and Nanak Nihal

The AMA was insightful and fun. Checkout the recording and recap of the event, also some alpha dropping from Holonym and Sign. Also, don’t miss Shady’s zero knowledge humour

We shipped a ton of content during September, with a special one published by Lightshift. 

Centralized to User-Centric Identity by Lightshift

The article delves into how Holonym is building a decentralized identity framework that puts users back in control of their data. 

Silk Blog Launched

To kick off the launch, we published a series of articles on introduction to Silk and Human Keys – what are they, how they work and the use cases. We also published an article on how Silk differs from other wallets. Link to the blog. 

Silk website

The website went through a complete UI makeover. Silky-er and sexy-er!

Silk, by Holonym

Silk is a human-friendly wallet as a protocol created by the Holonym Foundation. Silk combines the highest security standard (2PC-MPC) with the best UX to let users connect to all of web3.

https://www.silk.sc

The Renzo Protocol platform leverages Ethereum and EigenLayer’'s robust infrastructure and node operators to support the secure creation of Human Keys on Holonym’s Mishti Network. This enables users to generate keys using anything from biometrics to social accounts, ensuring usability, flexibility and security. 

The restaking ecosystem is an integral component of EigenLayer, driving greater capital efficiency for ETH and reinforcing economic security. Renzo protocol stands out as a prominent player within this ecosystem. 

‘’By integrating with the Renzo Protocol, we’re strengthening the security of our Mishti Network making Human Keys more accessible than ever’’ said Nanak Nihal Khalsa, Co-Founder of Holonym Foundation. 

“Human Keys are how we scale the benefits of crypto – security, privacy, data ownership – to global consumers. We do this by catering to the human behind the technology, making it easy for anyone to create a universal account that is usable across devices, doesn’t need an app, and is built on privacy secured by zero knowledge technology and the economic security of Ethereum.’’ continued Shady El Damaty, Co-Founder of Holonym Foundation.

Mishti is a network for Human Keys and is the first decentralized network to allow users to create secure, high-entropy, zero-knowledge private keys based on human attributes. These Human Keys make it simple for anyone to create a crypto wallet, recover it, and use it with any blockchain. ‘’With Mishti Network, we don’t need to rely on trusted systems like iCloud, to preserve our keys and keep them safe.” said Shady El Damaty, Co-Founder of Holonym Foundation.

Private Keys are neither created with random seed phrases which are usable only by web3 savvy users or by centralized entities for average users, often exposing personal data. Mishti changes this by making Public Key Infrastructure accessible to everyone. For the first time, users can create, recover, and manage secure cryptographic keys, with Mishti abstracting the complexity of cryptography from the user experience. The encrypted key remains accessible and controlled by the user on the client device.

Human Keys are plural to identity attributes, extending beyond biometrics to include options such as email, security questions, and even social security numbers. This flexibility allows users to define identity based on what matters to them. Using a threshold network, Mishti privately computes these identity attributes to generate Human Keys, ensuring that personal information is never exposed. 

To discover more about the future of digital identity and the novel application of Human Keys, visit https://www.mishti.network/. 

We are committed to onboard more reputed restakers like Renzo Protocol, to further decentralise the network for Human Key generation. Stay tuned for more exciting announcements to come!

About Holonym Foundation

The Holonym Foundation’s mission is the proliferation of Human Keys to make security and privacy more usable in zero trust environments. Holonym Foundation has developed infrastructure to allow anyone, anywhere, to create Human Keys with Mishti Network, easily use them with Silk and privately prove facts about their identity with Zeronym. 

Our Products

Mishti Network. A threshold network for zero trust Human Key derivation. Create high entropy Human Keys from private biometrics, passwords, security questions, or other human-memorable data. 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 save, send payments, access global internet finance protocols and manage your private data. Silk is a protected self-custody wallet that can be recovered without trusted guardians. 

Zeronym. Proof of personhood and private identity. Fast client-side privacy for identity verification, supporting digital credentials from 180 countries. Use Human Keys to prove any fact privately without revealing any information in zero knowledge. Business can utilize Zeronym for privacy-preserving KYC/AML with programmable privacy for on-going monitoring.

CONTACT & SOCIALS

For PR enquiries please contact press@holonym.io

Stay connected with Holonym Foundation and it’s Products:

🌐 holonym.id, https://mishti.network, http://silk.sc
✖ https://twitter.com/0xHolonym, https://twitter.com/zer0nym , https://twitter.com/mishtinetwork , https://twitter.com/silkysignon 
📲 Telegram https://t.me/holonym_official , https://t.me/mishtinetwork, https://t.me/mishticommunity , https://t.me/+YjZwY_a6EqU2NzNh 

💼 https://www.linkedin.com/company/0xholo/ 

✍ https://medium.com/holonym 

📝 https://paragraph.xyz/@holonym 

🎥 https://www.youtube.com/@0xholonym 

Led by Finality Capital and Paper Ventures, with participation from Arrington Capital, Draper Dragon, Lightshift, and others.

16th August, 2024: Holonym Foundation, an organization building the next generation of digital identity security for the decentralized web, is announcing 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 prominent funds. 

Shady El Damaty, Co-Founder of Holonym, said: "We’re building core person-first principles into the technology we ship out to the world. Our goal is to build a global open-source layer that upgrades the abilities of each citizen with basic access to a digital identity using cryptography to prove their personhood."

“We can’t have self-sovereign control of our monetary assets without self-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 usher in the next trillion dollars of assets into blockchain.’’, said Kamal Mokeddem, GP of Finality  Capital.

Cryptographic keys, or private keys, run the web and secure every digital interaction on the internet. But what if private keys could be built differently and in a more sophisticated way? Human Keys completely change how private keys are derived. Instead of creating private keys from random phrases, Human Keys make humans into keys. This new framing shifts ownership of digital assets from the holder of a random seed, to the human that can uniquely prove their biometrics. Human Keys make the ownership layers of the internet built on top more consumer-friendly, decentralized, and secure. 

Human Keys encompass three protocols built by the Holonym Foundation, all having security and robust data privacy systems as core principles: 

• Mishti Network, a breakthrough threshold entropy network that computes an Oblivious Pseudorandom Function (OPRF) on biometric data. 

  • This allows humans to derive random secure keys that are hard to steal, and it 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 crypto economic mechanisms that leverage the economic security of the Ethereum 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 personhood, residency, and other attributes to curate a rich digital reputation that they alone own and control.

• Silk, a simple and elegant wallet user interface for interacting with crypto protocols. 

  • Human Keys are made usable in the real world by 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 biometrics, e.g. your face. It is about what you have, what you know and what you are: your property, your memory, and your body. On the current centralized web, we are giving free ownership to our data. Web3 must be the space where we provide robust data ownership and secure sharing of personhood, so that nobody can own your data except you.’’ 

By granting every human in the world a secure key that only they can hold and control, we move towards global digital inclusion, precisely at a time when advancements in artificial intelligence are poised to leave so many behind. Shady El Damaty, co-founder of Holonym, says this is just the start for the Holonym Foundation. “Human Keys will redefine how citizens interact with the internet by limiting the overreach of power and hardening individual rights with resilient decentralized protocols built on Zeronym and Mishti Network.”

Holonym Foundation is focused on applied cryptography innovation that delivers solutions for real-world problems.

The Holonym Foundation’s mission is the proliferation of Human Keys to make security and privacy more usable in zero trust environments. Holonym Foundation has developed infrastructure to allow anyone, anywhere, to create Human Keys with Mishti Network, easily use them with Silk and privately prove facts about their identity with Zeronym. 

Mishti Network. A threshold network for zero trust Human Key derivation. Create high entropy Human Keys from private biometrics, passwords, security questions, or other human-memorable data. 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 save, send payments, access global internet finance protocols and manage your private data. Silk is a protected self-custody wallet that can be recovered without trusted guardians. 

Zeronym. Proof of personhood and private identity. Fast client-side privacy for identity verification, supporting digital credentials from 180 countries. Use Human Keys to prove any fact privately without revealing any information in zero knowledge. Business can utilize Zeronym for privacy-preserving KYC/AML with programmable privacy for on-going monitoring.

CONTACT & SOCIALS

For PR enquiries please contact press@holonym.io

Stay connected with Holonym Foundation and it’s Products:

🌐 holonym.id, mishti.network, silk.sc

✖ X Holonym | Zer0nym | Mishti Network | Silk

📲 Telegram Holonym Official | Mishti Network | Mishti Community | Holonym Dev Support

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New Partnership: We're excited to announce our collaboration with Vocdoni, merging their voting protocol with our zero-knowledge ID verification systems to offer privacy-centric voting solutions. Read more about it here

Holonym Sybil Defense Quest: Episode II is live on Galxe! Join the quest, earn ecosystem points, and compete for a share of the $2k prize pool. Let's empower our community to stand against Sybil threats together!

ZK SBT Holders' Benefits: ZK SBT holders can now earn 16 points on Gitcoin Passport effortlessly. Utilize our NFC-enabled passport for complete privacy and unlock your points towards the Humanity Score.

Important Update: SBT Expiry 📣 Starting February 1st 2024, SBTs minted after this date will expire after one year from the verification date. Stay tuned for future rewards and enhancements aimed at enhancing security and user experience.

Dashboard Release: We're gearing up to launch a dashboard empowering ZK SBT holders to support quality-driven airdrops. Our focus remains on fostering healthy governance and combatting industrial airdrop farming through proof of personhood.

Meet Mishti Network

Holonym Foundation launched an Actively Validated Service (AVS) on EigenLayer test-net that enables programmable privacy and the creation of “Human Keys” from biometric and low-entropy data sources. Read the announcement to learn more. Are you an Ethereum or AVS node operator, get in touch!

Network State Foundation:

The Network Society Forum seeks incubated a discourse for long-form content around network states and similar communities. The forum’s integration with with Holonym for Proof of Personhood, Silk for UX friendly profile management, and Ceramic for decentralized data storage makes the forum resistant to sybil attack, enabling private identity proofs, censorship resistance, and facilitates transparent peer to peer evaluation and discussion

• Core Identity Primitives: Building on Zero Knowledge (ZK), ID, and Human Keys.

• Recognition: ViaPrize’s deployment of core coordination infrastructure using SilkySignOn and Zer0nym.

• Strategy to Overcome Moloch: Onboard everyone, verify humanity, and coordinate.

• The Network Society Forum launched with a $500 prize pool for top articles in May.

• Full announcement post

• Sponsorship: Holonym announced as a Silver Sponsor of the DC Blockchain Summit 2024.

• Participated at DCDAOxyz, the Foundations & Public Goods panel at the summit.

• Othentic Stack Partners: Holonym is among the few AVSs, powered by Othentic stack as launch partners, along with RedStone Oracles, K3 Labs, and Firewall

• Development: Holonym is developing a personhood AVS on Eigenlayer to derive Human Keys from private biometrics and enable programmable privacy.

• Discussion: Holonym’s Co-founder  Shady El Damaty on privacy and the future of RegulationTech at the DigitalChamber Summit.
  

  

• Institutional Privacy Dilemma: @IncompleteRules and @CossarSofia have published a piece on how Zero-Knowledge Proofs (ZKPs) can resolve the "institutional privacy dilemma," highlighting the role of @0xHolonym and other innovative apps. Read more here!

• Promotion: Zeronym got listed on Magic Square, which was upvoted by the community to get it listed and validated.

The ResearchHub Foundation

The ResearchHub Foundation has unveiled an updated DeSci Ecosystem Map. Discover the key players and groundbreaking projects that are shaping the future. Explore teams revolutionizing publishing, funding, IP-NFTs, and more.

Check it out here: ResearchHub Blog

Sign Protocol Joins Forces with @0xHolonym 🔏

Users who successfully mint a proof of unique personhood SBT with Zeronym will now receive an attestation on Sign Protocol's public registry. This partnership ensures that identity proofs are discoverable by dApps across EVM  and other networks.. Learn more about the integration through our case study.

Proof of Personhood with Zeronym on Verax for The Linea Voyage

The Holonym Foundation announced a strategic partnership with Linea to bring another source of rigor for verifying and rewarding unique humans with the Verax attestation service.  Zeronym users that successfully mint  a proof of unique personhood SBT will now also receive an attestation on Verax's public registry, where their identity proofs can be discovered by dApps across EVM networks. More on the partnership here.

Update on Mishti Testnet
Mishti Network's penultimate testnet update before alpha mainnet was released to early node operators. This update paves the road to allow any node with restaked eth to permissionlessly join the network and earn fees as an operator. Mishti is built on the Othentic stack to interface with the Eigenlayer network.

This is the second article in a series that introduces Zeronym’s Clean Hands verification. Read the first one here.

Crypto needs a way to prevent hackers and bad actors (like North Korea’s Lazarus group bad) from using privacy protocols to funnel stolen funds without compromising privacy for everybody else. This article provides an overview of how Zeronym’s Clean Hands verification solves this long-standing challenge, refuting the arguments for both mass surveillance and for crypto as an effective black-market tool.

There are five steps in the Clean Hands flow.

1. Credential issuance

2. Proof generation

3. Attestation issuance

4. On-chain activity

5. Decryption

The user verifies their ID to Zeronym’s server. Zeronym queries whether the user is on any sanctions lists. If the user is not on any sanctions lists and hasn’t already received Clean Hands credentials, Zeronym issues signed credentials to the user. Privacy is crucial here. Zeronym does not store any sensitive user information. The user’s name and birthdate passes through RAM so that the sanctions list query can be made, but is never stored in permanent storage.

The user proves, in zero knowledge, that they have been issued “clean hands” credentials by Zeronym and that they have encrypted their information (in this case, name and birthdate) to Mishti Network. Zero knowledge proofs protect the user’s sensitive information, revealing nothing about the user except the fact the user is approved. The user’s personal information isn’t revealed, but the proof still establishes that the correct information is encrypted. For encryption, the user generates an ephemeral private key. They also use this key to sign an access conditions contract, a contract which determines for Mishti Network who is allowed to decrypt the user’s information.

The user sends the zero knowledge proof (ZKP) and signature of the conditions contract to an Observer node, which stores the encrypted information and issues an on-chain attestation to the user. This attestation says that the user is not on any sanctions lists, has provided the ciphertext of their identifying information, and has signed off on a particular access condition contract.

At this point, with the attestation in-hand, the user can interact with smart contracts that require it, for example, the Ethereum-Aztec bridge which allows verified users to transaction privately.

In most cases, there will be no reason for the user’s information to be decrypted. However, there will be some cases where a user’s blockchain address is connected to suspicious activity (identified using tools from Elliptic or TRM Labs, for example). In such cases, an entity–such as a regulator or compliance officer at a regulated DeFi project–might want to decrypt the user’s information. The entity can request the ciphertext of the user’s information from the Observer and can then request decryption from Mishti Network. Mishti Network will only accept the request if the conditions contract explicitly grants access to the entity requesting decryption. This prevents unscrupulous surveillance and data breaches, while still allowing for compliance with regulatory guidelines.

Mishti Network is a threshold network. This means the private key corresponding to Mishti’s public key is not controlled by any single entity. So, when we say the user encrypts their data to Mishti, we mean that the user encrypts their data to Mishti’s public key. In the decryption procedure, each Mishti node only returns a decryption share to the decryptor. The shares must be combined in a process known as Lagrange interpolation in order to arrive at the decrypted data. A Mishti node only returns decryption shares to a requester if the requester has been granted access according to the conditions contract that is associated with the ciphertext. This threshold mechanism combined with the conditions contract check is what lets users encrypt data to Mishti, and for another party to decrypt the data according to predefined conditions.

Let’s dive into each step in more detail.

In this part of the flow, the user verifies their identity, and Zeronym uses this verified info to look them up in sanctions lists, politically exposed persons lists, and watchlists. If the user is not on the queried lists, Zeronym issues credentials to the user which can be used to generate zero knowledge proofs. We use a standard KYC flow to verify the user’s name and date of birth, and a third-party API to query the sanctions lists. To ensure Sybil resistance, we store a hash of the user’s identifying data and do not allow the same user to verify multiple times. In the future, we plan on increasing privacy by enabling NFC-based identity verification instead of using standard KYC, allowing the user to avoid sending images of their face or government ID to any server.

The whole flow here is pretty standard, except for one piece. The Clean Hands flow (where the user is issued credentials that say the user is not on any sanctions lists) is actually distinct from the identity verification (IDV) flow (where the user verifies their name, birthdate, address, etc.), and we use a ZKP to allow the user to take their credentials from the IDV flow and prove that they are who they say they are in the Clean Hands flow. We can do this because the server that verifies that the user is not on any sanctions lists only needs to know the user’s name and date of birth. This extra modularity allows better UX and privacy. Users who do not want the Clean Hands credentials do not have to opt out of it in a menu in the regular IDV flow. Users who do want the credentials can get it without any UX friction aside from a loading screen, and our server can trust that the provided identity data is accurate. An additional, future benefit is that we will be able to plug in different methods of identity verification. A user will not be restricted to verifying their identity in a KYC flow but could, e.g., use the name and date of birth from their NFC passport to generate the ZKP used in the Clean Hands flow.

The zero knowledge circuit for the Clean Hands attestation verifies Zeronym’s signature of the credentials issued in the last step, encrypts the user’s name and date of birth, and outputs the ciphertext and the public key used for encryption. By verifying Zeronym’s signature, the circuit proves that the encrypted data is the data issued in the credential issuance step. Further, because encryption is performed in-circuit and because the public key is visible, our server knows that the user encrypted their data to Mishti Network. So, our server knows that the user encrypted the correct data to the correct public key, even though the server will never see the plaintext.

At this step, we also establish a verifiable link between the user’s ciphertext and the user’s selected access conditions smart contract, the contract which tells Mishti Network who can decrypt the user’s ciphertext. Before encrypting, the user must generate an ephemeral private key. This private key is used for ElGamal encryption in the circuit. The ElGamal encryption algorithm outputs ciphertext (c1, c2). c1 is a public key derived from the private key. This public key is used to arrive at a shared secret which is then used in decryption. Because this public key is part of the ciphertext, we can use it to verify a signature from the same private key used for encryption–which is what we do. With the same private key, the user signs the access conditions smart contract and encrypts their data, establishing a link between the contract and the ciphertext, a link which Mishti Network verifies before returning the decryption shares.

The user needs some on-chain representation that they have completed their Clean Hands verification, so we issue an attestation to their blockchain address. We use Sign Protocol to record attestations. (See the attestation schema here.) Before attesting, we do the following.

1. Verify the ZKP.

2. Make sure the encryption key output by the circuit is Mishti Network’s public key.

3. Make sure the issuer address output by the circuit is the Zeronym Clean Hands issuer.

4. Make sure the conditions contract signed by the user is on our whitelist.

5. Verify the user’s signature of the conditions contract.

6. Store the ZKP’s public values, including the ciphertext.

The Clean Hands ZKP also takes as input a blockchain address. It outputs this as well. The user selects which address they want to input here. We use this to establish a link between the user’s blockchain address and their ZKP in the Observer node so that the user’s ciphertext can be queried with their address. We send the attestation to this address.

Like the other Zeronym circuits, the Clean Hands circuit outputs an action nullifier. This allows for uniqueness checks. At credential issuance, each user is given a secret nullifier with their credentials. The circuit outputs a hash of an action ID and the user’s nullifier. We include this nullifier in the attestation in case DApps or other verifying parties want to check for uniqueness.

With this attestation, users can interact with smart contracts that require it. At Holonym, for example, we have built a proof-of-concept bridge on Aztec testnet, which allows honest users to transact privately, prevents known bad actors from transacting privately, and allows for accountability for users who are honest now but at a future time engage in suspicious on-chain activity.

It’s worth noting that the Clean Hands attestation is not meant to be used in isolation. Any compliance organization that relies on the Clean Hands stack to help identify bad actors will want to use other tools to monitor the on-chain activity of users with the attestation before requesting decryption. Access controls for decryption and common concerns around it are discussed below.

If someone with authority to decrypt wants to decrypt a user’s ciphertext, they do the following. After detecting suspicious on-chain activity, they use the blockchain address to query the Observer for the associated ciphertext, conditions contract address, and the user’s signature of the contract address. They send the contract address, the user’s signature, and their own signature to Mishti Network. The Mishti nodes verify the signatures. Mishti requires a signature from the address requesting decryption so that it can verify the address has been granted access to decrypt by the conditions contract. If the requester has access, and if the user’s signature verifies, the Mishti nodes return the decryption shares.

The conditions contract signed at the time of encryption by the user is the contract that determines whether Mishti is allowed to decrypt the associated ciphertext. Given how important the whitelisted contracts are to the privacy guarantees of the system, what kinds of contracts are on or will be on the list? For version 0, we have a contract that allows a single wallet to decrypt. This wallet is controlled by Holonym Foundation. It is rate limited to 10 decryptions per 24 hours so that Holonym Foundation cannot do surveillance or lose user data in a data breach. In the future, we expect to add contracts that require more voices. For example, we want to have a contract that requires a decryptor to first get approval from a DAO multisig; the DAO could set up its own processes, likely making use of on-chain forensics tools, to ensure fair treatment of users who have allegedly engaged in suspicious activity.

Another consideration around access controls is how to present the access control conditions to the user in the UI so that they are capable of making an informed decision about whether or not they want to encrypt their data to Mishti. To make the system as clear as possible while making the UX as easy as possible, we present the user with a consent screen with a simple explanation of the access control conditions. We also keep legibility in mind when implementing conditions contracts. Simple explanations targeted at users should not obfuscate underlying complexities, especially when user privacy is at stake.

How do we prevent a decryptor from abusing their authority? How do we stop them from decrypting all user data and ensure privacy for honest users? The first step to preventing unwanted decryption is to implement the correct access control contracts, as discussed above. A decryptor who has to go through a process with the correct checks and balances before they can access user data will be much more likely to restrict their decryption requests to users who are genuinely suspicious. Secondly, Mishti Network needs to be sufficiently resistant to collusion from operators who might want to bypass the access control conditions set by the smart contracts. Mishti operators are economically incentivized to act honestly. Operators must restake ETH to participate in the network and to receive fees. If operators collude, they risk hurting their reputation and being kicked from the network.

Next steps for the reader

Use the Clean Hands attestation in your dapp: https://docs.holonym.id/for-developers/clean-hands

Checkout the source code for the Proof of Clean Hands with encryption circuit: https://github.com/holonym-foundation/id-hub-contracts/blob/main/zk/circuits/circom/V3CleanHands.circom

Holonym Foundation develops protocols that enhance the security, transparency, and interoperability of digital interactions through advanced applied cryptographic and distributed systems. 

• Zeronym: A private digital identity protocol that verifies users without storing or seeing sensitive information. Data stays on user devices, and only proofs of identity are submitted. Programmable privacy provides transparent accountability for identity verification use cases that require regulatory compliance.

• Mishti Network: Provides decentralized cryptography primitives for a better web. It is an AVS on Eigenlayer that enables secure key derivation from passwords and private biometrics, allowing users to create web accounts linked to a private proof of their humanity that are controlled by keys that they only have access to. 

• Silk: An embeddable zero trust wallet that grants seamless access to the decentralized web with auto-custody. Silk is built on a decentralized back-end for key derivation and recovery. Your keys always belong to you, and only you can authenticate transactions with customizable security settings that stop scammers and hackers from draining your account.

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  Not often we introduce a game-changing technology! Collect this post as an NFT to follow us along our journey to bring privacy technology to the masses.

“Privacy is necessary for an open society in the electronic age. Privacy is not secrecy. A private matter is something one doesn’t want the whole world to know, but a secret matter is something one doesn’t want anybody to know. Privacy is the power to selectively reveal oneself to the world.” – Cypherpunk Manifesto

Crypto needs a way to prevent hackers and bad actors (like North Korea’s Lazarus group bad) from using privacy protocols to funnel stolen funds without compromising privacy for everybody else. This article provides an overview of how Zeronym’s Clean Hands verification solves this long-standing challenge, refuting the arguments for both mass surveillance and for crypto as an effective black-market tool.

This adage is especially true for privacy-conscious users that have flocked to tools like Tornado Cash, Z Cash, and Monero. Privacy on the internet is critical to prevent authoritarian abuse of technology, provide protection for whistleblowers, and more generally helps drive efficient markets by dissociating real world from functional identities, known as nyms.

Privacy happens to also be a great tool for well-organized entities that operate from behind the shadows with little-to-no accountability. In fact, over $7 billion USD of ill-gotten funds have been laundered using crypto privacy tools intended to protect the free-speech of everyday people. North Korea’s Lazarus Group, alone, has laundered over $900M of stolen funds using mixers and cross-chain bridges, likely to support weapons development for the pariah state. Even more startling, some bridges, such as the Avalanche BTC Bridge, can trace 20-30% of their total volume of bridged Bitcoin to addresses controlled by Lazarus Group.

This has drawn the attention of powerful regulators and law enforcement agencies that use arguments of heavy illicit-activity to justify anti-privacy policies and enforcement actions against crypto protocols. If left unchecked, this can push the trajectory of the internet, crypto, and the future AI systems that will inevitably be built on it, towards immutable autocracy and despotism and away from individual liberty over your data, assets, and how you use technology. 

This future fork in the path has fueled major debate on the merits of universal privacy as black or white, “either we accept privacy for all and the downsides that come with it, or accept the inevitable rise of technologically-empowered despotism with powers and capabilities unlike anything seen before in human history.” We believe that this dichotomy is false and that there is a third path that provides all consenting users privacy by default but accountability for those that infringe the terms of the contract they agreed to when choosing to use a specific technology. 

Privacy protocols built on multi-party computation networks, zero knowledge proofs, and public key infrastructure are powerful tools that can be used to eliminate mass surveillance but also help hold regulators accountable through transparent auditability and immutable policies that eliminate the need for back-doors.

Today, regulated Web3 financial services are required to implement Know-Your-Customer (KYC) and Anti-Money-Laundering (AML) processes to remain in business. Regulations require exchanges, on/off-ramps, and payment processors to verify the legal identity of each individual user, screen out high-risk individuals, and block services to individuals and organizations on sanctions lists. Businesses need to verify and keep data from all their customers (usually for years at a time) in order to comply with international money laundering and sanctions enforcement. Compliance requires the aggregation of sensitive personal information into honeypots for hackers, sophisticated state actors, fraudsters, and other malaligned actors. 

Zero Knowledge KYC lets individuals privately prove that they hold valid legal personhood and are not on any sanctions lists at the time of verification. This is typically done by receiving an attestation from a trusted identity issuer – such as Onifido or self-attestation with NFC ePassports – and generating a mathematical proof of identity that breaks any identifiable link between the personal data and the pseudonym that the proof is assigned to.

There is one key problem with this approach. Once the user is verified, they are completely pseudonymous and cannot be linked to their data. This means that businesses cannot comply with AML and sanctions laws. A “bad actor” may initially pass ZK KYC only to later be flagged as a possible hacker of stolen funds, or sanctioned entity. The on-chain identity cannot be determined after the fact with ZK KYC even if the identity issuer (Onifido) keeps the data on-hand. 

How do you maintain user privacy but also provide accountability? The answer combines ZK KYC with four elements:

1. User consent to transparent use terms & provable encryption of data to a public key

2. Trusted decryptor with a public key (DAO, compliance officer, power of attorney)

3. Mishti, a threshold network for custody of encrypted data

4. Smart contract with access control to Mishti

Along with ZK identity verification, these four elements form “Proof of Clean Hands.” dApps that operate in jurisdictions that have identity verification and data availability requirements can use Proof of Clean Hands to privately verify their users at onboarding. The user identity remains unknown to the dApp at all points. Only the elected decryptor can request decryption if certain conditions are met. Users must consent to the decryption conditions that the dApp specifies in the use terms. These conditions are stored transparently in a smart contract that gates access to the data. 

For example, in the event of a subpoena, (say for Tornado Cash), a user with Proof of Clean Hands will have already consented to encrypting their data to the public key of a third party (say a law firm or compliance consultant) and stored it within Mishti. At the time of consent, the user will have agreed to authorize decryption if their address appeared on a sanctions blacklist. The third party can comply with the court order by requesting the individual’s data from the threshold network. Note that discretion, and liability, for complying with a court order remains with the third party. The only entity that sees the plaintext is the decrypter. Nobody else, not even nodes on Mishti, can see it. This ensures user privacy while meeting legal requirements when necessary.

Proof of Clean Hands augments on-chain ZK-KYC/AML and solves regulatory bottlenecks across Web3 including for DeFi, Real World Asset (RWA) projects, launchpads, on-ramp/off-ramp protocols facilitating private transactions, high-value reward/airdrop distributions, and other use cases. The Proof of Clean Hands can be made available as a back-end call or through the Silk UI, Holonym’s onboarding wallet. Proof of Clean Hands within Silk is well-suited for mainstream use-cases of Web3, offering privacy, simple UX for wallet onboarding, and accessibility of zero-knowledge tech to the masses.

Are you a developer? Want to dive into the implementation? See this article for an in-depth description of how Proof of Clean Hands works.

There are five steps in the Clean Hands flow.

1. Credential issuance

First, the user verifies their identity, and verifies that they are not on any sanctions lists. They receive a signature from Zeronym attesting to their successful verification.

2. Proof generation

Second, the user generates a zero knowledge proof using the credentials from the previous step. The proof says that the user has successfully verified. It also proves that the user has encrypted their name and date of birth to Mishti Network. 

3. Attestation issuance

The zero knowledge proof is sent to one of Zeronym’s servers. The proof is verified by the server, and its public outputs are stored. The user receives an on-chain attestation at their blockchain address. This attestation says that the user has completed verification and has encrypted their name and date of birth.

4. On-chain activity

The user interacts with smart contracts that require the Clean Hands attestation, for example, the Ethereum-Aztec bridge which allows verified users to transaction privately.

5. Decryption

If necessary, the ciphertext from the user’s zero knowledge proof is decrypted. It might be necessary to decrypt this data if, for example, the user’s blockchain address is implicated in a criminal case and a search warrant is issued by a court. However, there are strict limits on decryption requests. There are two “layers” of decryption conditions: the terms of use and an on-chain smart contract. The terms of use is an off-chain agreement between the user, Holonym Foundation, and any third-party authorized decryptors. It defines, in legal terms, under what conditions a decryption request is allowed to be made. There is also a smart contract which determines the conditions under which Mishti Network will even satisfy a decryption request. For example, the smart contract we use in version 0 allows a wallet controlled by Holonym Foundation to make up to 10 decryption requests per 24 hours. This puts a narrow, clearly defined limit on decryption requests, a limit enforced by the blockchain, while still allowing some room to handle cases where decryption is necessary.

Protocols enabling private transactions are an exciting use case of ZK for everyday people who want to maintain privacy while using crypto, but such protocols have been abused by bad actors (such as Lazarus Group) to hide illicit financial activity. Proof of Clean Hands can be integrated into these protocols to allow verified users to transact privately, prevent known bad actors from anonymizing their ill-gotten gains, and enable due process and accountability.  

Capital allocation through Web3 grants programs is a mainstream funding source for builders in Web3. Most of these programs mandate KYC/AML checks due to the value of the grants and regulatory requirements. While many protocols prefer on-chain identity verification, its incompatibility with compliance has led them to rely on traditional KYC/AML checks. Proof of Clean Hands enables both privacy and compliance, allowing builders to remain anonymous.

Initial DEX Offering (IDO) launchpads have become popular platforms for crowdfunding projects. Token launches require KYC/AML for jurisdictional compliance, investor protection, and to prevent sanctioned entities from participating. Proof of Clean Hands provides Proof of Citizenship and screening for sanctioned entities, ensuring compliance with these requirements.

Proof of Clean Hands can be integrated as an additional privacy-preserving option with traditional identity providers for users in typical KYC/AML scenarios. This includes permissioned DeFi, gambling protocols (often targets for money laundering), and On-/Off-ramps.

The processes, agreements, and smart contracts that determine the conditions under which user data can be decrypted and the entities that are allowed to decrypt–all of these are highly customizable. For example, dApps wary against hackers, rug-pullers, and bad actors can elect to specify the public multisig key of a “Forensics DAO” as the decrypter for all verified identities within the use terms of their application and services. The Forensics DAO could be composed of well-established on-chain forensics companies, cyber security professionals, or legal firms that can validate or even challenge court orders. In the event of a major hack, Forensics DAO may be able to decrypt the identity of the perpetrator if the DAO achieves consensus.   

Despite the large design space here, we expect to converge on a small set of processes, agreements, and smart contracts that simultaneously maximize privacy for honest users, maximize accountability for dishonest users, and minimize potential overreach from decryption authorities. Our roadmap for this “decryption module” follows.

To ship a proof of concept quickly, we will start with a very simple design. In this design, Holonym Foundation is the only authorized decryptor. It can decrypt a maximum of 10 ciphertexts per day. Decryption conditions are defined entirely by the smart contract. The terms of use agreement does not limit decryptions. Holonym Foundation will decrypt if law enforcement presents us with a valid court order to decrypt.

Everything in version 0, but we add a terms of use that clearly defines the conditions under which user data can be decrypted.

We facilitate the establishment of a DAO that is responsible for requesting decryptions and interfacing with law enforcement (i.e., Forensics DAO). The smart contract still has rate limits on the number of decryption requests. This DAO will institute its own processes to determine whether a decryption request from an authority can be granted. It will use on-chain forensics tools such as those from Elliptic or TRM Labs, and investigate allegations on behalf of users in accordance with the terms of use. Decryption requests must be signed by a majority of the members of the DAO multisig or executed by a verifiable vote. DAO membership should be  highly restricted.

We help further decentralize DAO membership, especially to include compliance officers from other web3 projects. We facilitate contributions to make improvements to the smart contract to better suit the DAO. Namely, we modify the smart contract to allow the DAO to vote on rate limit increases or decreases (within bounds) so that rate limits can go up or down with usage, and we also add a decryptor role to the smart contract to allow the DAO to authorize one-off decryptions from specific entities without requiring the decrypted user data to be seen by DAO personnel.

Proof of Clean Hands is experimental software and undergoing rapid development. There are key risks and limitations that may not make it suitable for all use cases. Careful thought must go into the design to fit specific use-cases.

While the architecture removes trust in the identity verifier, the dApp service provider, and other middleware, it still requires the Decryptor to be trusted. The trust requirement goes both ways. Regulators and law enforcement must trust the Decryptor to act in good faith and perform the decryption when requested – as opposed refusing to comply and burning their keys. dApps and users must trust that the Decryptor only uses their data as agreed-upon, only to facilitate the execution of the conditions within the use terms. The Decryptor must be trusted not to misuse this data.

Deterministic conditions encoded within a smart contract also pose a specific risk. These conditions may not always be relevant to current conditions or have hidden exploits that bad Decryptors can take advantage of to unfaithfully decrypt user data. Fincen updates their AML requirements regularly and regulated protocols must be quick to adapt their use terms and have users re-consent in order to maintain compliance. These conditions may also sometimes reference centralized “oracles” to compute risk levels or source blacklists from. Governments or other powerful non-credibly-netural actors may have special privileges to update blacklists as they see fit. Risk levels may also be gamed by bad actors, such as by dusting accounts, or phishing honest users to interact with black-listed accounts to increase their risk levels and disrupt the normal operation of the system by saturating the rate limit.

Lastly, the Mishti threshold network must be trusted to maintain strong collusion-resistance. Each individual node must have sufficient incentive to not collude with other nodes to allow the Decryptor unauthorized access. Mishti is an Actively Validated Service that runs on Ethereum validator nodes and is secured by the amount of Ether restaked into those operators. The odds of AVS operators colluding are relatively low as long as a large USD amount of Ether is at stake along with their reputation as credibly-neutral infrastructure providers.

The solution space for transparent on-chain accountability that leverages programmable privacy to meet real world use cases and their regulatory requirements is still early and just beginning to emerge. Proof of Clean Hands offers a privacy preserving approach with a decentralized middleware for data custody and a roadmap to decentralize decryption responses to law enforcement or requests for information. Other notable projects that address similar challenges include Privacy Pools, idOS, Aethos, Nexera and ZK.ME. These services can provide redundant offerings for KYC providers and exchanges such as Fractal ID, Binance, Coinbase, and others.

Use the Clean Hands attestation in your dapp: https://docs.holonym.id/for-developers/clean-hands

Checkout the source code for the Proof of Clean Hands with encryption circuit: https://github.com/holonym-foundation/id-hub-contracts/blob/main/zk/circuits/circom/V3CleanHands.circom

Check out the docs! Or send a message to hello@holonym.id 

Holonym Foundation develops protocols that enhance the security, transparency, and interoperability of digital interactions through advanced applied cryptographic and distributed systems. 

• Zeronym: A private digital identity protocol that verifies users without storing or seeing sensitive information. Data stays on user devices, and only proofs of identity are submitted. Programmable privacy provides transparent accountability for identity verification use cases that require regulatory compliance.

• Mishti Network: Provides decentralized cryptography primitives for a better web. It is an AVS on Eigenlayer that enables secure key derivation from passwords and private biometrics, allowing users to create web accounts linked to a private proof of their humanity that are controlled by keys that they only have access to. 

• Silk: An embeddable zero trust wallet that grants seamless access to the decentralized web with auto-custody. Silk is built on a decentralized back-end for key derivation and recovery. Your keys always belong to you, and only you can authenticate transactions with customizable security settings that stop scammers and hackers from draining your account.

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Zeronym is a zero knowledge identity verification protocol developed by Holonym Foundation. It provides privacy-preserving proof of personhood, biometrics, residence, or compliance. Zeronym can be easily integrated into any site, on desktop or mobile, using the Silk SDK.

The Holonym Foundation is excited to announce a strategic partnership with Linea to bring another source of rigor for verifying and rewarding unique humans with the Verax attestation service.  Zeronym users that successfully mint  a proof of unique personhood SBT will now also receive an attestation on Verax's public registry, where their identity proofs can be discovered by dApps across EVM networks. 

Verax is an on-chain attestation registry.  It provides a way for developers to issue attestations on-chain that are discoverable, consumable and composable.  Verax was designed as a public good to support dApps and users within the Linea ecosystem, however it has also been deployed to other networks by different teams.  It is intended to be a community-maintained project, and has seen significant contributions from a number of teams, both in terms of commits to the open source repos and contributions to the governance process. Verax currently has over 5.2M attestations issued to over 1.4M unique accounts.

Right now most attestations are minted as SBTs that are used to attest to various accolades, achievements, membership etc. However, SBTs present some challenges when trying to understand what function they serve, who has issued them and why, and how they are intended to be used.  Once minted on-chain, they are not easily discoverable unless you already know about them somehow.

On-chain attestation registries have several advantages in this regard.  They offer a consolidated location on-chain where attestations are discoverable as soon as they are issued.  This also means that dApp developers only have to integrate once with the registry in order to access lots of data from multiple sources. It also allows services like Index Network, OrbisDB, Etherscan and more, to easily find attestations that have been issued to wallet addresses.

All attestations are associated with structured schemas that allow the attestations to be decoded by smart contracts and UIs, and that have human readable names and descriptions. Furthermore, attestations have useful properties such as expiry and revocation and they can be linked together.  Seen through this lens, it’s not hard to be convinced that on-chan attestations are poised to become a powerful primitive, and could easily see the same level of adoption as the ERC-721 standard.

The Ethereum ecosystem is rich with identity protocols and primitives, each offering different solutions. While identity can be captured in multiple dimensions, developers often struggle to navigate this landscape to find the best fit for their needs. Users also face the inconvenience of verifying their identity across multiple platforms.

Most identity verification is captured as SBT/NFT, which limits composability and reduces synergy between developer ecosystems. Verax’s attestation issuer stack, however, combines multi-dimensional identifiers, allowing developers and dApps to integrate with the registry based on their specific requirements. This flexibility also enables reputation protocols to design their own models.

Verax supports a variety of use cases, but let's focus on Zeronym’s Proof of Personhood here.

Over time, a user's crypto wallet becomes a rich descriptor that can directly associate the user with preferences, attributes, and future contributions and engagement. Identity attributes recorded in crypto wallets are unique because these attributes are persistent, usually open source, and can be combined with many other data sources to generate multi dimensional representations of the user and their preferences. However, the permission-less nature of blockchain allows the creation of multiple accounts, of many identities, which can be easily exploited by industrial-scale sybil attacks to mass produce "high reputation" accounts and unfairly claim rewards meant for unique individual users. 

Zeronym’s Proof of Personhood attestation, uses off-chain attributes such as phone number reputation and Government ID, to prove uniqueness in a private manner. The protocol uses a nullifier scheme ​​that maintains the integrity of the verification process, ensuring that a uniqueness proof can only be singularly generated. Proof of Personhood facilitates the fair distribution of rewards and airdrops, and supports digital governance mechanisms such as quadratic voting, and one-person-one-vote. These measures ensure an egalitarian approach, preventing sybil attacks and promoting genuine participation.

A recent report highlighted a 3000 percent increase in deep fake attempts, and a fivefold increase in digitally forged identities in 2023 which can be attributed to the accessibility and ease-of-use of AI tools. Most importantly, AI-based threats to automated electronic KYC is not a future phenomena, but an existing problem today. 

To combat deep fakes, the protocol also supports ZK NFC, where users tap with their phones to an ePassport to privately prove the NFC data locally on the device. ZK NFC proofs leverage the ePassport metadata signed by a government authority following the ICAO-9303 standard to confirm identities without sensitive data ever having to leave the user's personal device. ZK NFC proofs of government ID are impossible to deep-fake. Bad actors would have to subvert the Certificate Signing Authority, bribe or force government officials to access these guarded keys, and act on these ill-gotten credentials before keys are rotated and their subversion discovered. ICA-9303 NFC government IDs are gaining global adoption, and expected to become the defacto solution to prevent identity theft, fraud, privacy-infringement, and human impersonation by AIs by the end of the decade.

Reputation is essentially one's identity attributed to a Web3 footprint in the form of on-chain engagement and behavior. It is highly use-case driven, and perceived from the lens of individual protocols on what constitutes "good" or "bad" reputation. Verax’s diverse range of issuers allows dApps and reputation protocols to plugin or design their own pluralistic reputation models.

Designing reputation models can be complex due to the inherent subjectivity involved. However, having a foundation of identity adds a layer of objectivity and authenticity, especially in terms of uniqueness. Also, proving uniqueness doesn’t necessarily indicate a good reputation, but analysis of Zeronym’s SBT users shows that these users engage more in governance activities and receive higher airdrops compared to average users. We will be sharing the analysis in an upcoming post. This highlights how a strong identity foundation can reflect positive engagement and contributions in the Web3 ecosystem.

With the passage of FIT21 and the implementation of MiCA soon, proactive compliance checks by protocols can help create a safer Web3 environment by deterring bad actors. Most compliance protocols require user data to comply with laws, often leading to the doxxing of users by linking their on-chain addresses with off-chain credentials.

Zero Knowledge technology helps safeguard user data through selective disclosure, though it complicates access to user data in cases of subpoenas. Zeronym’s “Proof of Clean Hands” addresses this challenge by keeping user data private while allowing for decryption based on pre-defined smart contract rules. Users must consent to the Terms and Conditions and the possibility of their data being decrypted to a specified entity under specific conditions (such as sending funds to a black-listed address). In the event of a subpoena, the data is decrypted from Mishti Network a threshold network secured as an Actively Validated Service (AVS) on EigenLayer. This approach ensures user privacy, places user consent first before disclosure, eliminates the need for mass surveillance, and all-the-while complying with customizable legal requirements.

Identity primitives are still being tested out in Web3, and no project has become a single winner yet. Each protocol offers nuanced solutions that align with data sovereignty and have seen significant adoption. Resilience to attack vectors, access to new users, high cost of forgery at a large scale, and relatively universal credentials are some of the factors that place Zeronym as a solution to the trilemma of privacy, rigour and accessibility. Verax’s consolidation of identity attestations from various personhood protocols enhances its position, offering a more comprehensive solution than any single method of identification.

As discussed in a research report on personhood protocols, it’s important to disclose privacy measures and caveats. Zeronym is open source, and users verified with Zeronym on-chain are unable to be linked with their identifying information by any third party. For traditional eKYC, accomplished by placing user proofs into an anonymity set and obfuscating any link between all data shared with any third party, including Holonym. For ZK NFC, only secure proofs leave the user device, never is any sensitive, plaintext information shard with third parties. To further decentralize the architecture, Zeronym is will utilize with Mishti Network, an Actively Validated Service (AVS) for private biometric proofs of personhood that can't be brute-forced. 

In light of this exciting partnership, we’re launching a special Galxe quest with a prize pool of $3000! Participate in the quest to be part of The Linea Voyage and get the Proof of Humanity Attestation. 

Once the user gets verified, Zeronym issues a Verax attestation for every SBT it sends. The attestation is a cryptographic signature that the Zero Knowledge proof has been verified. The attestation is issued on Linea mainnet, with the contracts here.

• For developers, the docs gives an example of how to query and validate Zeronym attestations.

• An example of the verification flow is here

• Get verified here

Special thanks to Simon Brown from the Verax team for reviewing this article and contributing to several sections.

Arun’s roles include content making and biz dev at Holonym Foundation. His primary interests are identity, reputation and DAO governance. He voluntarily started making content to understand web3, while he enjoys doing it full time now, with biz dev work.

While not working he enjoys spending time on Twitter or camping on weekends.
X

There is no free lunch, unless maybe you are a Sybil. [sic]” — M.F. As long as free money is on the table, there will always be sophisticated actors that attempt to game the system; on par with the expected value they can receive, balanced against the cost they incur to achieve it. From government stimulus, to crypto token airdrops, defeating Sybil attacks can be a Sisyphean task. Recent airdrops challenge prior assumptions that attackers only engage in transactions of small amounts or avoid high transaction fees. In reality, some crypto Sybil attackers manage significant funds, incur substantial gas fees, and even maintain fake NFT portfolios, ENS domains, and social media presences, thereby debunking many myths about their operations.

“Airdrops” are events in crypto when a project distributes its tokens to users that meet specific criteria, often for “free”. Understandably, “free” tokens in a highly speculative market has made “Airdrops” a significant buzzword, especially following Uniswap’s 2020 airdrop. This event, while not the first of its kind, was notable for its unprecedented value at the time, setting a new standard for acquiring users in protocols and DApps. The phenomenon has even spawned a niche of Twitter influencers and strategists who specialize in airdrop hunting, sharing tips and insights on how to secure these rewards.

Airdrops serve as a crucial mechanism for protocols to boost adoption, enhance customer retention, test products, reward early users, and facilitate “progressive decentralization.” Tokens are distributed to wallets that have interacted with the protocol based on specific on-chain criteria. These distributions are not arbitrary; they are meticulously crafted by protocols to incentivize users who contribute to the growth of the protocol, whether through labor, capital, or both.

At its core, an airdrop in the Web3 space is similar to customer acquisition strategies prevalent in fintech companies, but with the added dimension of token utilities. In the Web2 world, customer acquisition and retention have traditionally relied on incentives like: free Uber rides, cashback, or PayPal’s $10 offer. However, in crypto, airdrops have taken this concept to a new level, with rewards ranging in 5 figures, significantly impacting the adoption and onboarding of new users into the crypto ecosystem. In other words: airdrops aim not only at customer retention, but also at creating a diverse group of stakeholders for governance and ensuring efficient tokenomics after the distribution.

Airdrops in crypto, while costly as a customer acquisition method, uniquely transfer ownership to the community, adding significant value beyond mere expense. However, their effectiveness is questioned, especially considering the high costs, estimated to be 4–7 times more than traditional methods. The core issue lies in whether these airdrops reach the intended community or fall prey to the exploitation of multiple fake online personas, also known as “Sybil attacks.” This raises a crucial point: Is “airdrops as a strategy” the actual challenge, or is it the execution that needs refinement? The potential financial impact on protocols from Sybil attacks, which could undermine the goal of equitable community empowerment, remains a significant concern.

Sybil attacks jeopardize the maturation of a decentralized protocol by skewing the distribution of allocations, leading to token price manipulation and potential governance attack vectors. In essence, a protocol intended to be community-owned risks being dominated by a wealthy few.

The evolution of airdrops in the crypto space is marked by a significant shift from simple, one-time distributions to more complex and nuanced strategies. Uniswap’s $UNI airdrop to over 250k addresses was a pioneering move, establishing the concept of retrospective airdrops. This approach rewarded past interactions with the protocol, such as providing liquidity, and set a precedent for future airdrops.

Subsequently, other protocols have developed more sophisticated criteria for airdrop eligibility. For instance, dYdX experimented with trading volume-based distributions, reflecting a move towards condition-based eligibility. This evolution in airdrop design reflects the growing maturity of the space and the desire to align airdrop strategies more closely with the principles and objectives of each protocol.

At the heart of these evolving strategies is analyzing on-chain data, which serves multiple purposes:

• Identifying Organic Activity: Distinguishing genuine user interactions from artificial ones to ensure fair distribution.

• Detecting Sybil Behavior: Identifying and filtering out manipulative practices by users who create multiple accounts (Sybils) to unfairly benefit from airdrops.

• Quantifying On-Chain Activity: Using data to label wallets and determine their eligibility for airdrops based on specific criteria.

These developments indicate a move towards more dynamic and responsive airdrop mechanisms, aimed at fostering genuine engagement and equitable distribution of rewards.

Airdrops are fundamentally intended to transfer governance to the entire community by distributing tokens to individual users and DApps within the protocol’s ecosystem. However, most airdrop designs exhibit inherent flaws. For instance, only about 7% of wallets that received Uniswap’s airdrop still hold $UNI. While Uniswap set a precedent in this domain, it’s understandable to overlook some of its early mistakes. Yet, protocols that later adopted airdrops have also struggled to maintain reasonable retention rates.

Sybil-resistant airdrops have become a complex and sophisticated endeavor, challenging the initial assumptions that attackers only engage in transactions of small amounts or avoid high transaction fees. In reality, some Sybil attackers manage significant funds, incur substantial gas fees, and even maintain fake NFT portfolios, ENS domains, and social media presences, thereby debunking many myths about their operations.

The substantial cost of airdrops and the expenses incurred from Sybil attacks pose a dual threat: they undermine the goal of decentralization and result in significant financial waste.

Richard Chen

@richardchen39

Richard Chen

@richardchen39

What are the largest airdrops in history? In terms of amount of $$$ distributed?

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3:59 • 26 Oct 2023

At first glance, having a percentage of airdrop farmers might seem benign, potentially increasing protocol interaction and aiding in product testing. However, airdrop designs are meticulously crafted based on specific principles and objectives, primarily to shift ownership from centralized teams to a broader base of stakeholders.

The challenge arises when protocols cannot differentiate individual users from Sybil wallets. As airdrops have evolved from retrospective to recurring mechanisms, so too have Sybil attackers, who now farm airdrops based on the varying criteria set by protocols. Sybil attacks jeopardize the maturation of a decentralized protocol by skewing the distribution of allocations, leading to token price manipulation and potential governance attack vectors. In essence, a protocol intended to be community-owned risks being dominated by a wealthy few.

Participants often engage in platforms like Discord or Snapshot primarily for airdrop eligibility, leading to inflated and misleading metrics of genuine community involvement. Increased voter participation in Stargate’s snapshot is an example of airdrop farming that can have consequences on governance.

The Web3 data landscape has evolved to analyze better and index data for identifying Sybils and designing more nuanced airdrop mechanisms. For example, the Arbitrum Foundation, with assistance from Nansen, implemented a detailed approach to determine airdrop eligibility. This approach categorized wallets based on their on-chain behaviors, such as bridging frequency, transaction counts, and balances. To filter out Sybil addresses, those anticipating airdrops without genuine utility intent, they used clustering algorithms on transaction data, complemented by human assessment, ensuring that only genuine participants aligned with the protocol’s values received the airdrop.

In another demonstration of Goodhart’s law, X-explore’s analysis of Arbitrum’s Airdrop revealed significant Sybil activity, with approximately 150k Sybil addresses and over 4,000 Sybil communities participating in the airdrop, cumulatively profiting from more than 253 million tokens. Despite this, Arbitrum stands out for its higher retention rate post-airdrop, surpassing other protocols, so the book is still open on their airdrop strategy.

Similarly, Optimism’s strategy of recurring micro airdrops demonstrates a reasonable retention rate. This approach, enhanced by data labeling techniques that pinpoint Sybil clusters, represents an efficient step in combating Sybil manipulation. However, as Disruption Joe highlights in his talk, the task of differentiating between genuine organic activity and Sybil activity through network analysis remains a formidable challenge.

Identity verification is pivotal in equitable airdrop distribution. By accurately identifying unique individuals, protocols can enhance customer retention, reduce acquisition costs, and ensure fair governance distribution, all while mitigating the financial drain caused by Sybil attacks.

Anti-sybil methods developers and researchers in the space are beginning to converge on social attestations as the only viable path forward for decentralized communities to guard against Sybil attacks without sacrificing privacy. A Web of Trust can be a disconnected graph where every person, or node, in the network is as trustworthy as other nodes say they are. In some variations, reputation is transferable, where a highly trusted node that vouches for a new node in the network receives a higher trust score than two new nodes that attest to each other.

An advanced example of the Web of Trust in action is the Circles UBI experiment. The project allows for the distribution of Universal Basic Income in the form of “personalized cryptocurrencies” that begin being issued when the user first joins the network. When two nodes attest to each other’s currencies, they can now exchange with both currencies on an equal basis. Over time, as trust attestations traverse the network, a superset of currencies emerge, allowing people to pay for goods and services with any of the tokens that have been trusted.

However, to join the network, new users must be attested by enough existing users to achieve a sufficient fungibility to participate in the network. This challenge can be difficult in networks with high centrality that make it difficult for new entrants to gain trust. Fake accounts are still a key problem for Circles, there is no way for a person to know the person they are exchanging with is a “shell” account, especially if it is trusted by many other accounts.

Web of Trust approaches to airdrops are limited by their ability to differentiate fake attestations from real people vouching for each other. This weakness becomes a larger handicap if the network is accessible to AI agents controlled by a centralized actor. If the agent cant pass a Turing test, then achieving a social attestation of trust is trivial, and disrupts the power balance in favor of those that have the resources to perform an AI Sybil attack.

Holonym’s method ensures privacy in airdrops by preventing the association of off-chain personal data with on-chain wallet addresses.

Identity verification is pivotal in equitable airdrop distribution. By accurately identifying unique individuals, protocols can enhance customer retention, reduce acquisition costs, and ensure fair governance distribution, all while mitigating the financial drain caused by Sybil attacks.

Industrial-scale Sybil attacks, which farm a significant portion of airdrops, pose serious threats to protocol integrity. In the realm of Web3, where permissionless systems are foundational, introducing identity verification can be a delicate balance between privacy and security against sybil attacks. Self-Sovereign Identity offers a promising solution, adaptable for use in airdrop mechanisms.

The diversity of identity tools available in Web3, such as Web2-based authentications (Twitter, Discord), biometrics (Humanode), KYC methods (BAB token), identity aggregators (Gitcoin Passport, Galxe Passport), and ZK IDs (Polygon IDs), provides a range of options to combat Sybil attacks. Each tool has its unique applicability and intricacies, allowing protocols to choose based on the desired level of proof of humanity and other factors like cost implications.

In crypto, using government-issued IDs for KYC processes, particularly when shared with third parties for identity verification, raises significant concerns regarding data breaches in centralized systems. Holonym’s zero-knowledge based KYC method addresses this issue by verifying the existence of these IDs without revealing specific personal information.

This approach ensures that the wallet minting the Soul-bound Token (SBT) remains disconnected from any off-chain personal data, upholding the user’s anonymity.

Holonym’s data responsibility, involves encrypted storage and transmission with immediate deletion of sensitive information post-verification, effectively mitigating the risks associated with traditional KYC practices, providing a secure and privacy-preserving solution for identity verification in the blockchain space.

Privacy-Preserving Airdrops with Holonym: Holonym’s method ensures privacy in airdrops by preventing the association of off-chain personal data with on-chain wallet addresses. This is achieved through encrypted data transmission while signing off on the credential and a nullifier scheme during verification, coupled with the use of a Merkle Tree as an identity mixer, ensuring that users can prove their identity without compromising their anonymity. This architecture will be upgraded in early Q1 2024 to remove all third parties and tie the attestation directly to the public key of the identity authority without requiring permission for the user to attest on their own behalf.

Ease of SBT: SBTs, being non-transferable NFTs, are well-suited for credential holding. They can be easily queried to verify if a wallet holds these assets, using tools like Collabland or custom bots for Discord. This makes them convenient for integration with other tools to prove humanness. Holonym also provides an API that allows any web service to query whether a user holds a proof of uniqueness SBT.

Quest and Loyalty-Based Airdrop: Airdrop eligibility has evolved into quest-based allowlisting. The development of tools for community building through quests and loyalty programs is on the rise, yet Sybil resistance remains a challenge. Protocols can integrate Holonym for human verification in these quests, or community builders can incorporate Holonym at the campaign level for Sybil resistance.

Soft & Hard Choice Based on Requirement: Holonym offers two types of SBTs: one for soft proof of personhood via phone number authentication through OTPs, and another for hard proof through government ID authentication. Protocols can choose either verification process based on their specific needs.

One-Person-One-Vote Based Governance or Quadratic Voting: Post-airdrop, token weighted voting is commonly used. However, for protocols interested in one person one vote mechanisms or quadratic voting, Holonym’s ID for proving unique human identity becomes a relevant choice.

Inclusivity of KYCs: Although KYC has not reached global ubiquity, it remains the most widely used identity system, especially since it’s required for opening bank accounts and availing subsidies. Leveraging this extensive network and bringing it on-chain while maintaining privacy can aid in scaling. Holonym employs verifiers like Idenfy and Veriff, broadening the verification process by incorporating more KYCs while preserving privacy.

Holonym’s DID Stack: The modular nature of Holonym’s Decentralized Identity (DID) stack allows other identity protocols to become issuers using Holonym. For instance, Etherscore, a reputation platform that awards badges based on certain on-chain activities, can issue Holonym SBTs. An Etherscore badge holder with more than 10 badges, for example, could be eligible to mint a Holonym SBT.

Forgery: The availability of KYC documents or information for creating fake KYCs in the black market is a concern. Identity verifiers on Holonym use liveness checks to deter bad actors from faking KYCs. Holonym v2, coming early Q1 2024, will close many attack vectors along this front by utilizing NFC and biometrics identity technology.

Buying KYC: Collusion with individuals in low-income countries to create Holonym IDs is feasible due to the low cost of committing people to use their KYC for minimal value. This issue is not unique to Holonym but is prevalent in most proof of personhood verification systems. The incident of Worldcoin IDs being purchased highlights this challenge.

Countermeasures include increasing the cost of minting, which, while deterring fraud, also raises the barrier for genuine users. Enhancing fraud resistance can also be achieved by incorporating additional on-chain activities that increase the cost of creating such accounts.

Crypto, an entirely bootstrapped industry, has seen airdrops play a pivotal role in its growth. However, the mechanism of airdrops is not without flaws. The challenge lies in ensuring these airdrops reach their intended recipients without falling prey to manipulative tactics like Sybil attacks. Advances in data analysis and identity verification are key to propelling this mechanism forward.

The Holonym Foundation is thrilled to announce its partnership with Sign Protocol as an identity issuer with high rigour, privacy and compliance checks. Now, users who successfully mint a proof of unique personhood SBT with Zeronym will also receive an attestation on Sign Protocol's public registry. This partnership ensures that identity proofs are discoverable by dApps across EVM  and other networks. Sign Protocol’s existing integration partners includes identity providers, transactional analysis tooling, in-house token distribution tool, and now, the addition of Zeronym as a high rigour, privacy preserving and compliant identity verification provider makes Sign Protocol a complete package for efficient token distribution. 

Collation of verifiable attestations for identity is an ideal design choice for third party applications to verify users’ identity from a single source, with built in features such data provenance, interoperable across networks, permissionless nature to issue and consume attestation. 

Although web3 identity protocols have great adoption, they are often siloed to be accessed by builders and users. Attestations will help consolidate identity verification from different sources into a single repository, that can be plugged in for sybil resistance, and other specific use cases related to identity verification. Expanding the issuer stack for identity attestations and increasing the number of attestations will enrich the registry, allowing developers of third-party applications to access this comprehensive identity database permissionlessly.

Zero Knowledge Identity is more of a megaproject where projects are setting standards, building infrastructure, and iterating on identity primitives and application design. With advancement in Zero Knowledge primitives, ZK ID solutions are increasingly being adopted and tested out. 

Composable attestations are capable of functioning as a public registry to capture issuance of identity proofs and make novel identity primitives built on ZKPs more accessible, marketable, universal and portable. Public attestations are a very direct path to increase adoption of ZK ID.

Sign Protocol is an omni-chain attestation protocol, enabling users to freely attest and verify any information on-chain. Attestations serve as a powerful methodology to implement sybil resistance in managing token sales/claims, or even in creating ways to credential particular types of users. Sign Protocol was most recently used to bring off-chain KYC data on-chain through attestations to help conduct Zetachain’s airdrop - enabling the distribution of >$30M to 14K+ verified addresses.

Sign Protocol is part of the composed attestation landscape, including the likes of Gitcoin Passport’s EAS attestation and Verax’s attestation registry. Gitcoin Passport’s on chain stamps are attested into Ethereum Attestation Services for broader usability in the Ethereum ecosystem, while Verax’s attestation framework, although compatible across EVM networks, is more prevalent in the Linea ecosystem. 

Sign Protocol will support attestations on EVM ecosystem and will accommodate more non-EVM chains in the future, making the solution omni-chain. Sign Protocol’s schema registry is designed to cater to a broad range of needs and use cases for attesters by offering diverse and versatile schemas. The schemas can be either stored on-chain and off-chain depending on the factors influencing the choice such as composability, security, cost and scalability. 

Sybil resistance has tons of use cases in web3 given the permissionless ability to create multiple accounts. This is frequently abused by industrial-scale sybil groups. Providing sybil resistance to airdrops could save nearly 9% to 30% of the airdrop value, throw a red carpet for decentralization, increase retention rates and set the starting point for safer governance.

Sign Protocol, with its suite of products for sybil resistance, compliance check, and token distribution mechanism, is well positioned as the one-stop for airdrop distribution management. 

Let’s explore how attestation from Zeronym adds more value to Sign Protocol’s airdrop distribution.

Zeronym’s Proof of Personhood attestation, uses off-chain attributes such as phone number reputation and Government ID, to prove uniqueness in a private manner. Govt ID credentials are highly universal, with over 5 billion holders that can be verified through Holonym, and being used in high stake scenarios such as opening bank accounts, receiving subsidies and voting. 

This proof helps new users bootstrap identity, without the need to have an extensive web3 footprint signaling transactional engagement. Notably, 23% of Zeronym’s user base consists of new users, with wallet ages less than three months.

To ensure rigorous sybil resistance the protocol uses a nullifier scheme ​​that maintains the integrity of the verification process, ensuring that each proof remains singular in its use. The nullifier also masks the user on-chain making it infeasible to link the identifying information with on-chain address. Analogously, the protocol functions similarly to Tornado Cash or Privacy Pools, but for identity rather than money.

Zero Knowledge technology helps safeguard user data through selective disclosure, though it complicates access to user data in cases of compliance requirements. “Proof of Clean Hands” addresses this challenge by keeping user data private while allowing for decryption based on predefined smart contract rules. For decryption, the data is decrypted using a threshold mechanism programmed on the Mishti Network – an Actively Validated Service (AVS) on EigenLayer created by Holonym Foundation. This approach ensures user privacy while complying with legal requirements when necessary.

Also, when for regulatory reasons airdrops above a certain value require  collection of KYC data, Zeronym helps manage this requirement for compliance without compromising on privacy. 

For regulatory reasons, certain countries are often blocked  from airdrops. Zeronym can be used for selective disclosure such as proof of residence to avail the airdrop, and blocklist residents of certain countries. 

Weeding out Sybil groups could save significant tokens, valued at $millions. From these saved tokens, protocols can airdrop a certain percentage of tokens to citizens from underdeveloped countries. Some of these countries have cryptographically secure  identity documents that can be used to prove citizenship on-chain through Zeronym. Direct cash transfers have proved to have ripple effects on economies. A similar approach such as direct crypto transfer could have a positive impact on livelihood and set network effects to encourage more people to be onboarded to web3.

Once the user gets verified, Zeronym issues a Sign Protocol attestation for every SBT it sends. The attestation is a cryptographic signature that the Zero Knowledge proof has been verified. 

• For developers, the docs gives an example of how to query and validate Zeronym attestations.

• An example of the verification flow is here

• Get verified here

Glossary of Key Terms

In the past year, the personal information of 2.6 billion individuals was stolen or compromised in massive data breaches (Apple's December 2023 report). The increasing frequency of data breaches across industries is alarming. The 2017 Equifax data breach and the 2016 Uber data breach are two of the most well-known. In the Equifax breach, financial information of approximately 147.9 million Americans (FTC Equifax Data Breach) was compromised - a massive leak of names, addresses, social security numbers, driver license numbers and credit cards. In the Uber data breach, approximately 57 million users (Lifelock Uber Data Breach) and drivers had their names, email addresses and phone numbers leaked. It’s no coincidence that bot calls and anonymous scams have picked up in intensity. Events like this have made consumers more aware of data privacy and security. It’s much like squeezing toothpaste out of a tube, once it's out, you can’t put it back into the container. Once critical data is exposed to the wrong parties, it can result in devastating damage to customers and organizations.

All of the elements of data security can seem a little overwhelming. From privacy, elliptic curves, asymmetric keys, security threat models and more - data security can seem a little unapproachable, but thinking about how it impacts our everyday lives on the web can make it much more relatable. Putting our information in the public record should be a consensual act on the internet. However, data breaches and privacy violations are becoming too common to the point that they are an expected part of the online experience.

Every day cybercriminals exploit vulnerabilities, leading to identity theft, financial losses, and eroding trust in technology. Careful protections for privacy and data security are paramount to protect against cybercriminals. Every online interaction leaves a digital footprint - from every “likes” to shopping habits. Companies and third parties collect vast amounts of information to improve their products and services for better monetization. While this benefits companies, customers also benefit from more personalized experiences.

However, this personalization comes with a costly tradeoff of decreased privacy and security. The consequences of data breaches are tangible, resulting in identity theft, financial fraud, and reputation damage. Hackers create fraudulent accounts and accumulate debt in victims' names, while exposed financial data grants unauthorized access to bank accounts, leading to financial losses. Elderly people are especially vulnerable to these fraud schemes, such as a couple that was scammed out of nearly $700k by an online scam. If you’re interested in learning more about their story, click on the below image to take you to the video.

The impact of these breaches extends far beyond individuals, and it has a detrimental impact on companies as well. These incidents make them vulnerable to litigation and diminishes public trust in their services. These consequences demonstrate the importance of reducing risk with data minimization, where users share only essential information required for a service. Embracing this principle can reduce the volume of exposed data and mitigate the risks of breaches and misuse.

Zero-Knowledge Proofs (ZKPs) solve this challenge in a unique way with cryptography. They can be leveraged to minimize the need to store data on risky third-party servers, while never allowing the sensitive data of consumers to leave their personal devices.

At the most basic level, ZKPs let you prove you have certain attributes or data without divulging the information itself. ZKPs are a paradigm shift in how data is treated and what information is shared on the internet. This novel approach can transform online interactions and make privacy the default on the internet. The fundamental idea behind ZKPs is that the validity of data or information can be verified without having access to the data itself. They enhance the security and privacy of data by providing a layer of separation between the user and the verifier. To better understand the fundamental concept behind ZK Proofs, please see the below visual. 

Graphic Made By The Holonym Team

ZKPs are a powerful tool in the privacy arsenal that enable consumers to safeguard their information discreetly, without compromising their privacy. Let’s explore how this emerging technology is being leveraged to preserve and optimize data security and data privacy, such as the need for selective disclosure of information (i.e., only sharing the minimum data needed to complete a transaction on the internet).

Exciting Applications of ZKPs

• Age Verification: ZKPs validate eligibility for online purchases or access to age-restricted content without disclosing birthdates.

• Income Validation: ZKPs determine income brackets for loan applications or financial services without revealing precise salaries.

• Medical Record Access Control: ZKPs confirm a patient's medical history suitability without exposing specific conditions in stigmatized scenarios, such as access to medical services that require specialized approval for hospital or insurance purposes.

IV. Conclusion

These examples merely scratch the surface of the transformative potential of ZKPs to return data privacy firmly into the hands of users. Our journey doesn’t end here. In the next part of this series, we will explore different technical approaches to ZKPs, and the unique challenges that come with each approach. Additionally, we'll discuss Zeronym by Holonym - a suite of tools to deploy any dApp with full ZK functionality in less than an hour.

Stay tuned for the next article. Remember, technology is constantly evolving and embracing solutions like ZKPs is crucial for optimizing privacy and security for users. Until next time, don’t forget to check out the Holonym resources to continue your learning journey about ZKPs.

• Holonym Foundation Website: https://holonym.id/

• Holonym Documentation: https://holonym.id/

• Silk Website: https://www.silk.sc/

• Holonym GitHub: https://github.com/holonym-foundation

• TechieTeee: DeveRel for Holonym

• Background: Data Engineer + Blockchain Developer

• Tech Interests: Passionate about decentralized data infrastructure

• Hobbies: Hackathons + Cooking

Developers from 5 different countries gathered in Denver from Sunday, February 25, to Saturday, March 2, to code, learn, and bounty-smash their way through ZK proofs, full-stack building, and UI problems. We recently chatted with a few of these residents to learn their backgrounds and why they’re building with Silk.

Silk

@silkysignon

no matter if its a bull or bear, sleep comfy with silky

reneedaos (on farcaster)

@reneedaos

@silkysignon pillowcases

7

5:08 AM • Mar 6, 2024

ETHDenver was full of ZK everything this year. We saw many improvements to wallet use cases and user experience and upgrades in both privacy and identity mechanisms. To discuss what Silk has been up to for the past year and to hear about what’s coming next for future Silk hacker houses, Silk Devrel Renee provides some insight on future ETH events, too.

"In Denver, teams used their creative efforts to build Telegram bots, embed wallets into their apps for seamless Silk integrations, and more. Between building and hanging out, teams were treated to workshops from sponsor teams Ceramic and CoopHive among several others."

With Silk, now in open beta, creating a new wallet is as easy as entering an email address and password. Once you’re in, all the usual wallet capabilities are there with the added benefit of an Apple Wallet-like UI with cards showing balances and identity Zero Knowledge tech allowing you to verify with both phone number and government ID. As Renee mentioned,

“With Silk’s trust minimized wallet recovery, you don’t have to worry about misplacing your seed phrase.”

This dramatically reduces the friction of signing into apps. This makes Silk a transition to a wallet that not only just works but gives you peace of mind other embedded wallets don’t offer. Try out the Silk beta today and learn about the Silk Hacker House builders below.

Chatting with Marco and Ayat, two team members from PoSciDonDAO, you quickly realize the impact that DeSci has on our futures. The two of them have worked together since September 2023 in DAOs while at University studying virology in Rotterdam, Netherlands.

Marco, the technical co-founder of PoSciDonDAO, talked to us about how they are working to solve the science issues of today and tomorrow. He’s been studying virology and oncology since May 2020 and was brought into the DeSci space to help bring more funding to the field.

The duo was accepted to the Silk Hacker House to complete a bounty integrating the embedded wallet into the website for their DAO to make onboarding super easy. Marco said they use their parents as test subjects to know when things are easy enough, which, come to think of it, isn’t such a bad baseline. Marco said the goal is to “make voting on proposals and the future of DAOs more user-friendly”, and that’s why he chose Silk as a continuation of the work he’s put into the DAO’s early builds.

The team completed the bounty for this build in under 24 hours, too, and if you take a look at the Silk docs, you’ll find just how simply an embedded wallet can be integrated. Marco added that another reason they chose to implement Silk was because “once more infrastructure is set up for the DAO, PoSciDonDAO will have more chances for funding” in the future. It turns out that making an interface so easy to use can actually make it easier for folks to say yes when it comes time to apply for grants.

Catching up with Levi is always a brilliant exercise in how much you can handle drinking from a firehose of info. Levi is building CoopHive, an EVM-compatible two-sided marketplace for computing resources. Essentially, CoopHive is working to create a multi-chain, multi-token marketplace for exchanging compute for AI agents. If that sounds complicated, well, it is. But that’s what makes the blockchain and AI marriage so fascinating.

Levi was first invited to the Silk ETHDenver Hacker House in 2023 and returned this year to sponsor a $1000 research bounty to prevent cheating in certain use cases. Imagine one day you’re driving around and need to take the most efficient route; well, with such compute resources exchanged between cars driving on the road incentivized to take the most efficient route for all, you wouldn’t want any single car cheating their way to the top of the leaderboard.

As for future Silk Hacker Houses, Levi said he definitely intends to return. Maybe we’ll see him and CoopHive again at the next event with a new puzzle to solve.

Silk

@silkysignon

Loving dev talks from .@ceramicnetwork this morning

16

5:20 PM • Feb 27, 2024

Closing out our interviews with builders at ETHDenver, we get a sense that both the wallet space and DeSci are maturing. These 8 hackers came together to create wallet solutions they were either already considering or were newly attracted to because of how simple Silk is to build with. The goal for Silk and the Silk dev community at these reoccurring hacker houses, according to Renee, is to give residents space to get creative. An IRL presence helps developers make new friends, gain a new understanding of the tech they are using, and earn bounties along the way. Going as far as getting contracts or full-time work for residents internally or with sponsors.

The apps built at ETHDenver Silk Hacker House were

• AI chat application with native silk sign-on

• A data batch upload tool

• Governance platform for scientific funding

Coming up soon, Silk plans to host another hacker house for builders working on ZK proofs, building consumer apps with Silk, and, hopefully, a few surprise use cases. Taking feedback from previous hacker houses in mind, the upcoming activations in will see the return of familiar sponsors and more time to network. Curious hackers may also find new open experiments with the upcoming release of Mishti by Holonym, a personhood AVS on Eigenlayer for deriving private keys from biometrics and programmable privacy. Stay tuned for announcements when we reveal the next Hacker House.

Ceramic, Next.ID, Private AI, Bacalhau, CoopHive, Akash Network, Threshold Network and a big thanks also to all who came out to give talks and meet with the house residents.

The first quarter of 2024 was bigger than ever us! More than 80 percent of our total users joined by the end of Q1, indicating strong adoption and where growth complements a shift towards more user-friendly UX, making Zero-Knowledge technology accessible to a broader audience.

We’re thrilled to reflect on the significant milestones achieved and the exciting journey ahead. Here’s the recap!

• 2024 Roadmap Unveiled: We began the year with the unveiling of our ambitious roadmap, outlining the release of Holonym v3, the open beta of Silk, and our commitment to further decentralization, 🔜🐈‍⬛.

• Glo Consortium Partnership: Holonym Foundation joined forces with the Glo Consortium to strengthen our ecosystem, pledging a significant portion of our treasury to Glo Dollars to support philanthropy.

• Optimism Network Dominance: Holonym ZK proofs for KYC and SBT minting emerged as one of the leading sources of gas consumption on the Optimism network, consuming over 30 ETH since July.

• Silk Launch: Introducing Silk, a major moment in wallet technology. Now anyone, including grannies, can create an auto-custodial wallet with just an email and a password. 

• Rewards for Galxe Questers: We introduced an exciting new Galxe quest with special rewards for Fantom ZK SBT minters, fostering community engagement and participation.

• Contributing to Public Goods: Holonym's substantial gas usage on Optimism continued to fund public goods through our retroactive funding program, supporting the growth of the ecosystem.

• $SQR Airdrop powered by Holonym: Partnering with Gitcoin Passport, Holonym facilitated Magic Square’s airdrop to distribute 1,000,000 $SQR

• Humanitarian Airdrop Exploration: We explored the potential of using ZK SBTs for "Humanitarian Airdrops" to underdeveloped regions, aiming to provide direct support to those in need.

• 

• Upgrade and Silk Beta: We announced a major upgrade to Holonym, accompanied by the public beta launch of Silk, aiming to advance web3 adoption significantly. 

Silky new UI Skin, who Dat!

• Humanitarian Airdrop Proposal: We proposed Humanitarian Airdrops to combat Sybil farming, advocating for direct fund transfers to promote economic growth and web3 adoption.

• Partnership with WaterDAO: Silk announced a partnership with @_WaterDAO, focusing on enhancing user onboarding experience and supporting water science and governance initiatives.

• Silk’s Airdrop of Attendance Proofs for DeSci Summit - Participants of the DeSci Summit in Denver received Quest NFT airdrop, facilitated by Silk. These NFTs were sent directly to their email addresses as a digital proof of attendance, which will be activated upon NFC verification at specified DeSci Summit locations and related sponsor activities. 

• Building an Attestation-Gated Web3 Forum with Holonym: Built an open source forum that leverages Holonym for sybil resistance, token gating, and voting.

• Silk Hacker House Co-Hosted by Ceramic. We welcomed talented developers and engineers from all over the world to take a shot at earning several bounties, totaling up to 10k, with incredible sponsors such as Next.ID, Private AI, Bacalhau, Akash Network, and others. 

• Holonym v3 Launch:  The new protocol upgrade unlocks 10x scalability, stronger security mechanisms for self custody of identity, with improved UX, lower costs, maintaining high rigor, and nurturing plurality in identity verification.

• Partnership with NEAR Protocol:  Holonym deployed on NEAR protocol through it’s integration with Nada.bot - an identity aggregator that powers Public Goods Funding on NEAR protocol.

• ZK Identity Solutions: We expanded our ZK Identity solutions to offer anonymous KYC, whitelisting, and geo-gating, ensuring secure verification processes.

• Community Engagement: Our community's active participation on NEAR for quadratic funding continues to drive innovation and growth.

• User Feedback: We're listening closely to your feedback to improve our ZK proof verifications within the app for a more user-friendly experience.

• Silk passed an intensive Cure53 audit with flying colors, showcasing the superior security of MPC wallet architectures with major UX improvements for mainstream adoption. 

• 100K On-Chain ZKPs: We are thrilled to announce a major milestone in our journey – surpassing 100,000 on-chain zero-knowledge proofs (ZKPs)! This remarkable achievement is a testament to the robust security and privacy our platform offers. It's clear that efficient and secure zero-knowledge proofs are in high demand.

Additionally, Holonym Foundation would like to express appreciation to Private AI, Bacalhau, Next.ID, Akash Network, DeCiv Fund, Ceramic, and TalentDAO for their contributions to the success of the Silk Hacker House at ETHDenver.

As we look ahead, we're thrilled to announce:

🌊 Upcoming WaterDAO Airdrop - Stay Tuned! 🚀

Prepare to make waves with Holonym as we announce an upcoming $rH20 drop in partnership with @_WaterDAO! Dive into the world of innovative water protocols and seize exciting opportunities for engagement and rewards. This exclusive waterdrop for Holonym SBT holders adds even more value to our partnership. Keep your eyes peeled for more details coming soon!

🌌 Holonym Airdrop Raffle in June - Get Ready! 🪐

Join us as we gear up for the next Airdrop/lottery raffle in June, rewarding participants of the Sybil defense campaign. This quarterly event offers everyone multiple chances to win, shaping a fair and inclusive community.

Additionally, stay tuned for these exciting upcoming events:

• Ambassador Campaign: The Holonym Foundation is gearing up to unveil the Holonym Ambassador Campaign Program, aimed at promoting awareness about the Holonym ecosystem and its innovative technologies.

• Meme Contest: Calling all creatives and meme enthusiasts! Get ready to unleash your wit and humor in the Holonym Meme Contest! Stay tuned for details on how to participate and win exciting prizes.

• Mishti is Coming 🤫

Thank you for being part of the Holonym journey. Together, we're shaping the future of decentralized finance and technology.

For more updates and discussions, join us on Twitter @0xHolonym and Discord.

Let's continue to innovate and build together!

With gratitude,

Holonym Foundation 🌐

The internet is very much still in its early days, and like any frontier enterprise an element of risk or danger is always at play. The “move fast and break things” mentality has shipped incredible modern convenience into the palms of our hands, but this hasn’t come without a cost. The risk of being doxxed, getting hacked, being defrauded, is just a regular and expected part of experiencing technology today. Regularly, we send websites passwords that we use everywhere. It’s now casual to upload your government ID to book a hotel, or make a payment. Even worse, sensitive data, such as biometrics or health information, are stored in databases, where malicious incentives and data breaches can cause irreversible harm. This complacency has allowed a multi-trillion-dollar honeypot of digital value to emerge, ripe for the taking. And the consequences are not just economic, but also touch civics, governments, and global security.

Mishti Network is Holonym Foundation’s contribution to public defense for user data on the internet. We built Mishti to minimize the damage of future attacks on critical digital infrastructure and lay the foundation for a more resilient internet. At its core, Mishti Network is a key primitive for secure data custody through strong identity proofs and authentication with minimal trust in third parties. It enables 

• Digital wallets from low-entropy data sources, such as biometrics or passwords

• Recoverable keys using identity proofs without trusted custodians

• Compliance tools with transparent accountability

• Secure nullifiers from low entropy identifying data

All without the need for centralized intermediaries who see data or private keys.

Mishti Network is a threshold network for elliptic curve scalar multiplication performed over a distributed set of nodes with linear secret sharing. This unlocks several highly versatile cryptographic functions for identity and streamlined key UX: Particularly, it unlocks threshold verifiable oblivious pseudorandom function (VOPRF) and ElGamal decryption over zero knowledge (ZK)-friendly curves.

Pseudorandom functions (PRFs) can take data that isn’t random, say my password: MishtiNetworkAdmin123 and turn it into something far more random and difficult to guess:

jc1Cfo4dcWG6Ls4MymAk5z0PTz5i5kl8cHpZQ5JPtag=

The average password has 40 bits of entropy. This means it takes approximately 2^40 tries to guess it. In other words, it can be guessed in one trillion tries, which is quite feasible for a modern computer. For reference a secure cryptographic key today must have at least 128 bits of entropy. Like passwords, biometrics are low in entropy, and so are identifiable characteristics such as name, birthday, address, and phone number. 

But PRFs have a catch: they require a secret key to be mixed with the input. A centralized server would typically store the secret key and see the password, biometrics, or identifiable characteristics. This isn’t ideal for security, privacy, or decentralization. Centralization also causes problems with regulatory standards, the custodian of a secret key is often always the effective owner, or controller, of the data or assets its controls. Many companies prefer not to hold risky data or be exposed to complex regulatory compliance requirements that often come with hefty fines.

Oblivious pseudorandom functions solve for custody and security. They allow computation of the PRF without knowing its input! So you can provide a password to a server running an OPRF and it can help you convert it to a private key without learning your password. A convenient and relatively efficient OPRF we use is the 2HashDH algorithm.

If computation occurs blindly, how do we know the OPRF gives the correct result? Here, an efficient zero knowledge proof of discrete log equality (DLEQ) is provided. This makes the OPRF a verifiable OPRF, referred to as a VOPRF. Once it is verifiable, it can be done in a decentralized way since we can hold nodes accountable for their results.

To decentralize it, we compute Lagrange interpolations of individual OPRFs:

$$s \cdot G \cdot \sum_{i=0}^n y_i \ell_i(x)$$

where $$\ell_i(x)$$ is defined as

$$\ell_i(x) = \prod_{j=0, j \neq i}^n \frac{x - x_j}{x_i - x_j}$$

Here, s is the user’s secret input, G is the generator point of an elliptic curve, $$y_i$$ is the $$i^{th}$$ node’s secret share and $$\ell(i)$$ is the $$i^{th}$$ node’s Lagrange basis defined above. The resulting value is the network’s contribution to a decentralized OPRF.

It only starts here though – there are numerous hurdles we have overcome in making Mishti network resistant to collusion and asynchronously scalable to billions of users. We look forward to sharing more about such developments in the coming months.

It turns out that the same distributed scalar multiplication for 2HashDH VOPRF can also be used for verifiable threshold ElGamal decryption!

ElGamal works by performing a Diffie Hellman key exchange with an ephemeral key and the recipient’s public key. Then this secret key is added to the plaintext. To threshold it in a verifiable way, DLEQ proofs and Lagrange interpolation of individual results are used.

What is this and why does it matter? Threshold decryption allows a network to hold sensitive data and control who decrypts it. No nodes in the network can ever see the encrypted data. There are a couple protocols like this such as Lit Protocol and Threshold Network. These are general-purpose decryption protocols and in fact complementary to Mishti Network. Our approach is tailored for ZK-friendly curves such as BabyJubJub. This enables an important primitive: provable encryption to a threshold network. This is critical for harmonizing ZK systems with compliance requirements, and importantly, without sacrificing user agency or giving into the urge for mass surveillance.

Usually, in ZK KYC, nobody can track users. However, law enforcement often requires the ability  to investigate users suspected of engaging in illicit finance. This leaves projects with a tough choice: either give users real privacy, or keep it safe by storing their data and following the law. Unsurprisingly, most choose the latter.

The interesting innovation with Mishti Network is that it enables you to choose both. Provable encryption lets the overwhelming majority of users retain complete privacy, while the rare few suspected of crimes are revealed to law enforcement – an improvement over the status quo where no one has privacy.

Now! Mishti Network is now live in a semi-centralized version. A decentralized testnet is slated to launch in Q2, with mainnet planned for production in Q4. To use the centralized version you will need to be whitelisted; please fill out our 1-minute typeform. 

If you are a ZK identity protocol, wallet, or other protocol interested in using Mishti Network, please make sure to fill out the typeform.

Crypto as a coordination mechanism

The network state could soon move from a concept stage to mainstream adoption, given the increasing options for token ownership designs, treasury management, tokenizations, availability of privacy-preserving identity verification, new funding mechanisms, and Web3 native community management tools. Network state represents the idea that you start with an online community, one that’s economically prosperous, engaged, and has shared values—and then manifests it into the physical world. While network state is one of the starting points and intersections of crypto and shared communities, the concept has been advanced in other similarly aligned communities and movements like startup societies, coordi-nations, the regen movement, the pop-up village movement, etc.

In this context, The Network Society Forum seeks to incubate a discourse for long-form content around network states and similar communities, that allows individuals and groups to intervene in the concepts and promote progressive discussion. It provides an open space for the collaborative development of ideas, hypotheses, and strategic plans. To set this in place, Network Society has launched a writing competition on better systems of governance and socio-economic-political structures with a prize pool of $500. 

Today's online forums like Discourse, popular among DAOs for governance discussions, face significant limitations. These platforms often require heavy moderation, lack seamless integration with Web3 tools, and do not support account interoperability across different DAOs. Users must create unique accounts for each forum, increasing the risk of sybil attacks, spam proposals, manipulation of votes, among others. Ease of access to bad actors or bots can significantly damage the purpose of the discourse community. 

The forum’s key integrations with Holonym for Proof of personhood, Silk wallet for UX friendly profile management, and Ceramic for decentralized data storage makes the forum resistant to sybil attack, enabling private identity proofs, censorship resistance, and facilitates transparent peer to peer evaluation and discussion. 

The Network Society Forum

@netsocieties

Announcing the launch of The Network Society Forum with a $500 prize pool for the most upvoted articles posted in May!

Post articles here: nsforum.net

Full announcement post: nsforum.net/post/kjzl6cwe1…

Integrations: @ceramicnetwork @silkysignon @0xHolonym

6

1:24 • 2 May 2024

Holonym’s NFC Passport Verification enables private proof-of-personhood using zero knowledge proof generation tailored for client device performance, using meta data from ePassports. Users tap with their phones on the passport and it privately proves the NFC data. This method ensures complete privacy and zero user data exposure. For the writing competition, Holonym’s ZK NFC will be used to upvote submissions, based on which prize pool will be allocated. This ensures one person one vote, and transparency in allocation. 

While Holonym helps with identity verification, Silk is the part of Holonym’s modular stack for key and data custody facilitates easier onboarding via email sign up, and instant wallet recovery through ZK identity proofs. Silk is a self custodial web account that doubles as a wallet, and serves as a profile for Network Society’s forum. Silk creates an easier UX to onboard users, with the same interface being used for identity verification makes the whole process seamless. While the onerous process of wallet creation, and dealing with seed phrase itself is a barrier to entry, Silk’s easier access makes it better suited for individuals to participate in the writing context and participate in the forum with no friction. 

Ceramic wraps up the whole functionality by hosting the forum on a decentralized storage network, leveraging verifiable event streams, combining blockchain-like qualities with the efficiency of traditional databases. While the forum may hide posts from the front-end that does not adhere to community guidelines, all profiles and posts use a publicly viewable web3 database that no centralized authority controls, making it censorship resistant. The forum also intends to make a “hidden post” section that can be viewed by all. 

As part of its mission to foster impactful discourse, The Network Society Forum invites all visionaries and thinkers to engage with the platform and participate in a writing competition this May. With a $500 prize pool for the most upvoted articles, the competition aims to encourage high-quality contributions that explore innovative ideas in governance and digital community building.

Vocdoni is a pioneering platform that harnesses the power of blockchain technology to offer secure, anonymous, and universally verifiable voting systems. At its core, Vocdoni aims to make voting and governance processes more democratic, transparent, and accessible to all. By utilizing decentralized technologies, Vocdoni provides a solution that mitigates traditional challenges such as fraud, manipulation, and lack of transparency in voting systems.

The importance of Vocdoni in today's society cannot be overstated. As we navigate through complex socio-political landscapes, the need for trustworthy and inclusive decision-making tools has become paramount. Vocdoni steps in as a revolutionary platform that ensures every vote is counted, every voice is heard, and the integrity of every election is preserved.

Holonym stands at the forefront of identity verification, offering solutions that respect user privacy while ensuring the authenticity of participants in any digital interaction. By leveraging zero-knowledge proofs and other privacy-preserving technologies, Holonym enables individuals to prove their eligibility for certain actions (like voting) without revealing unnecessary personal information.

The collaboration between these two innovative platforms, Vocdoni and Holonym, marks a significant milestone in the advancement of secure and private democratic processes. Together, they aim to address one of the most pressing issues in digital governance: ensuring that participants in a vote or decision-making process are genuine, without compromising their privacy.

Vocdoni has already achieved a significant real-world impact through various high-profile voting scenarios, including the official digital referendum in the municipality of Bellpuig, Spain. Voting processes for Football Club Barcelona, political parties and the "14Fruites" project, a parallel survey to the Catalan elections that received up to 4000 votes from citizens using digital identity. The Vocdoni and Holonym partnership brings forth a plethora of possibilities for real-world applications. Here are just a few ways this collaboration can transform the world:

• Decentralized Governance: Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs) can leverage this partnership to conduct secure and private votes among members, ensuring only verified individuals participate in decision-making processes. This opens up new avenues for DAOs to operate with greater legitimacy and trustworthiness.

• Verifiable Polls: Communities, whether online or local, can utilize Vocdoni’s platform integrated with Holonym's identity verification to run polls and elections that reflect the true will of the community members, free from external interference or fraudulent activities.

• Corporate Elections: Corporations can adopt Vocdoni and Holonym solutions to conduct board elections, shareholder votes, or any internal decision-making processes with an unprecedented level of security and privacy.

• Reduced Voting Costs: Conducting elections IRL is notably expensive, requiring significant effort and coordination. However, digital voting systems offer a promising alternative. If these systems can be made accessible to the intended participants in a secure and seamless manner, with rigorous identity checks, they could significantly reduce costs and improve efficiency. Holonym addresses the challenge of user onboarding for identity verification by being both rigorous and seamless, effectively minimizing drop-offs during the onboarding process. To put things into perspective, the Election Commission of India spent $7.71 billion on conducting the 2019 election.

• Cross-Border Inclusion: Holonym's support for ID cards from 190 countries makes it an inclusive solution, enabling the participation of voters from various countries. This broadens the use cases and accessibility of digital voting systems, promoting a more inclusive approach.

• Geo-Gating: While the inclusivity of cross-border participation is beneficial, certain voting systems may need to restrict voting to individuals from specific countries (e.g., the USA) or regions (e.g., the EU). Holonym is equipped to handle these requirements by enabling selective disclosures, thus facilitating elections that adhere to specific geographic criteria.

• Enabling Security Council Voting in DAOs: Security councils have become increasingly common due to the high stakes involved in treasury management and other key protocol decisions. Holonym supports one-person-one-vote mechanisms for KYC-compliant addresses, allowing council members to demonstrate their adherence to the KYC process without disclosing any personal information. This approach instills trust among all stakeholders in the council members.

Consider a reality where every ballot holds weight and each vote is recorded securely with confidence. Suddenly, your vote matters. In this realm, voter confidentiality is safeguarded, and the credibility of the electoral system is greatly improved. The collaboration between Vocdoni and Holonym marks a significant stride towards realizing this goal.

A. Voter privacy is safeguarded: One's voting record remains confidential, shielding individuals from potential retaliation or targeted messaging based on their voting choices.

B. Verifiable electoral processes: Preventing any malicious attempts to manipulate results and securing voters' intention via zero-knowledge proofs.

C. Voter Integrity is strengthened: Creating a system that does not depend on a single entity or central authority to validate results, allowing for trust minimized and reliable vote counting.

By combining Vocdoni's blockchain-based voting system with Holonym's identity verification technology, we are paving the way for more transparent, secure, and inclusive decision-making processes across various domains. As we look forward to the implementation of this partnership in real-world use cases, it's clear that the potential impact on democracy, governance, and community decision-making is significant. 

Holonym is delighted to announce its partnership with NEAR Protocol, marking a significant integration of its smart contract with nada.bot, a smart contract on NEAR focused on sybil resistance. This collaboration aims to enhance sybil resistance within a wide array of applications in the NEAR ecosystem, including public goods funding, airdrops, and access control all while preserving user privacy in the process.

What's Nada?

Nada.bot, serving as an identity aggregator, leverages a variety of identity verification methods. The inclusion of Holonym’s credentials—SybilGovID and SybilPhone, into the ecosystem not only diversifies these methods but also ensures a more rigorous and seamless verification process for Real Humans.

Introduction to NEAR Protocol

NEAR Protocol is a carbon-neutral blockchain designed to offer high performance, security, and scalability. It utilizes a layer-one, sharded, proof-of-stake architecture to achieve its goals, focusing on both developer and user accessibility. NEAR aims to provide a blockchain solution that is easy to use for everyone involved, from application developers to end-users.

It introduces human-readable account names and a web-based wallet for ease of access, and also web2 like onboarding with FastAuth. Transactions on NEAR are fast and cost-effective, with the network maintaining a commitment to carbon neutrality. The protocol also strives to hide the complexities of blockchain for both users and developers through Account Aggregation and Chain Abstraction. 

For developers, NEAR offers a conducive environment for building applications, supporting popular programming languages like Rust and Javascript. Rust is a language we love at Holonym, and we expect to have many more tailored integrations within the ecosystem. 

Nada.bot - Identity aggregator on NEAR ecosystem

Nada.bot is a smart contract based sybil resistance aggregator for the NEAR ecosystem. It can be used by users to collect stamps to prove humanness by achieving a threshold score on the contract, enabling access to public goods funding, rewards, among other benefits. Nada.bot presently powers PotLock for Public Goods Funding. Identity touch points are highly siloed and multi-dimensional, but an aggregator helps bring them under one hood, and scoring them based on stamps helps dApps choose the threshold score based on their requirement. In short, Nada.bot simplifies the verification process.

Holonym ZK Identity provider

Holonym is pushing the boundaries of ZK identity verification within the EVM ecosystem and now the NEAR ecosystem. Holonym will have both of its credentials SybilPhone and SybilGovtID for users to increase their human score. Accumulating both the scores will help users attain 27 points out of the possible 100 points, making it easier for real users to prove humanness by revealing minimal facts in a privacy preserving manner. The timing of the partnership is complemented by the launch of Holonym’s v3 that enables seamless and instant minting of proofs, poised for mass adoption. Applications in the NEAR ecosystem can verify unique users, without the need to store their personal data. 

Nada.bot as an identity aggregator is well positioned to harden the boundaries for sybil defense in the NEAR ecosystem, while Holonym tags along as a stamp that offers rigorous sybil resistance with self-custody. 

Using Holonym with NEAR

• Visit https://silksecure.net/holonym/diff-wallet if you have an already-funded wallet you would like to use to pay fees on Aurora, Ethereum, Optimism, or Avalanche.. 

• Visit https://silksecure.net/holonym/silk if you do not already have a funded wallet on these chains or want to use the Silk wallet for other reasons.

• Follow the steps to get  proof of a unique government ID or phone. 

• When you prove, enter your NEAR account ID that you want the  uniqueness proof to be publicly linked to

Now you're done! have obtained the uniqueness proof for the NEAR SBT and can use it with sites like  to prove you are a unique person!

Head over to https://app.nada.bot/ to become a verified human. 

Future ahead

The deployment of Holonym as a NEAR smart contract for identity verification, marks an important milestone, by aiming to become the hub for identity across the NEAR ecosystem. Dapps can now use Holonym for sybil resistant airdrops, anon KYC, one-person one-vote, faucet access, geo-gating, quadratic funding, token-gated forums, reputation badge, and more. 

The Web3 Identity Landscape is Evolving

The identity landscape within Web3 is experiencing significant advancements in adoption and the development of new identity primitives. This evolution includes innovative privacy mechanisms that leverage zero-knowledge proofs, along with the rapid adoption of the Decentralized Identifier (DID) stack, and the utilization of technologies such as Transport Layer Security (TLS), Multi-Party Computation (MPC), and Trusted Execution Environments (TEE). 

Identity information can be acquired from a variety of sources with these systems, including Web2 accounts, webs of trust, KYC protocols, on-chain reputation, Proof of Humanity protocols, and Web3 social networks, among others. While each solution addresses distinct challenges, standardizing these protocols for interoperability is crucial for advancing the identity space in Web3. The Gitcoin Passport, for example, has merged these isolated identity data points into a cohesive identity score. Organizations can use this score to gate access for participants based on set thresholds, tailored to their access and security needs. 

As the use of diverse identity tools and cryptographic primitives to develop identity solutions continues, building on the pillars of self-custody and selective disclosure, will rightly propel this space forward. Building on these principles will also set a precedent outside of crypto in other sectors, including finance, education, science and logistics, in managing data more securely and efficiently. 

Holonym V1: Addressing Sybil Resistance in a Privacy-Preserving Manner

Holonym, which began as a hackathon project 2 years ago, has effectively positioned itself within the identity space, emphasizing privacy, self-custody of data, and scalability. As of this writing, Holonym has completed almost 100k verifications, with more than 50k credentials in the anonymity set. The protocol leverages zero-knowledge proofs to allow users to prove facts about themselves on-chain and import identity attributes while remaining safe from tracking and data breaches. Although Holonym is modular enough to plug in with almost any type of identity issuers, the protocol started with fairly standard credentials - verified phones with real history and screened for malicious activity and support for Government IDs from 190 countries.

SybilGovID is a zk-KYC proof of identity generated from a valid Government ID that offers strong rigor and high Sybil resistance. Government IDs, which are relatively universal, can serve as off-chain attributes that we import with Zero Knowledge proofs to minimize leakage of sensitive information. Holonym utilizes these credentials  to create on-chain proofs for selective disclosure. The prevailing identity verification landscape in Web3 tends to favor users who engage in numerous on-chain transactions and depend on social attestations, which may lead to centralization issues. Consequently, it is most effectively utilized by those with a strong technological background, limiting accessibility of Web3 to wider demographics. However, the use of Government IDs broadens accessibility, allowing newcomers to mint their Holo ID for identity verification. This lowers the barrier to entry while ensuring privacy. Importantly, this method not only assures privacy but also offers robust Sybil resistance, leveraging the widespread and global acceptance of government IDs for critical functions ranging from opening bank accounts to availing subsidies—a testament to their proven effectiveness in real-life scenarios. This credential not only verifies the validity of the GovID but also includes AML screening, signaling identity and reputation. Its scalability and strong resistance to Sybil attacks make it promising for scenarios requiring high levels of trust, such as airdrops, rewards distribution, digital civic engagement, voting, and wallet recovery. 

SybilPhone allows users to prove ownership of a phone number with a significant call history. This credential offers adequate rigor at a lower cost than SybilGovID and can be scaled up easily. SybilPhone is particularly useful for filtering out bots. Both credentials are issued as Soulbound Tokens (SBTs), facilitating token gating, allowlisting and reputation scoring.

Despite decent adoption rates of both credentials, there are a few limitations of the V1 architecture that have been addressed in newer releases. The time to generate proofs has increased substantially after Holonym crossed 30k verifications, making it impractical and certainly a UX turn off for any user, this has been solved by Holonym V2 by removing the need for a Merkle Tree anonymity set. Secondly, Holonym's architecture incorporates a third-party identity provider to verify facts about a user's government ID. Although Holonym requests the deletion of this data post-verification, the certainty of data deletion remains unverified. Despite the identity provider's inability to track users on-chain based on the verified credentials, the ideal scenario for data privacy is self-custody, where credentials do not leave the user's device. Holonym v3 implements strong privacy protections through self-custody.

Holonym V3: Setting the Gold Standard for Privacy with improved UX

The common narrative in web3 is to onboard the next billion users through better UX. In that direction, if Holonym wants to bring the next billion “real” people to web3, the proof has to be generated instantly and seamlessly on consumer devices. V3 enables faster proofs to be generated, in mere milliseconds, without compromising on privacy and security. In fact, V3 enables better privacy by enabling NFC based verification for NFC compatible Govt IDs such as ePassport, Aadhaar, and other cryptographically signed credentials. In a very basic sense, V3 enables Holonym not to read any data pertinent to the credential, and enables the Government to become issuers in a privacy-preserving manner, making the process entirely trustless.

VOLE-Based ZK Proofs

Holonym v3 marks a significant advancement towards self-custody by transitioning from zk-SNARKs to focusing on information-theoretically secure ZK proofs based on VOLE (Vector Oblivious Linear Evaluation). This architecture ensures that proofs are generated client-side on consumer hardware, such as laptops or mobile phones. While zk-SNARKs are limited to simple computations on these devices, VOLE-based ZK proofs significantly enhance prover efficiency by 1000x compared to zk-SNARKs. This improvement enables the protocol to verify arbitrary facts about credentials from various sources such as NFC-based passports, Aadhar, email ownership through DKIM signatures, web account ownership through JWTs, and potentially even Ethereum state trees, all on consumer hardware. This efficiency also opens the door to producing privacy-preserving proofs on device-siloed biometrics to detect liveness with AI.

How this Fancy Math (Zero Knowledge) Enhances User Experience and Privacy

For starters, Zero-Knowledge Proofs allow one party (the prover) to prove to another party (the verifier) that a statement is true, without revealing any information beyond the validity of the statement itself. In the context of ePassports, ZKPs can be used to verify identity or age without revealing the actual data or document to the service provider, with proofs being computed on consumer devices. Here are some examples:

Age Verification: Without revealing the date of birth, a ZKP can verify that the passport holder is above a certain age. The application can use the date of birth from the ePassport’s metadata to calculate the age and then generate a proof that the age exceeds a specific threshold, all without revealing the actual date.

Nationality or Residency Verification: A ZKP can prove that the individual holds a passport from a specific country or region without disclosing the passport number or the individual’s name. This is useful for services restricted to certain nationalities or residents, for example digital voting, health insurance, and other civic rights or privileges granted to legal residents.

Authentication: Or, is this document real? Using the digital signature and certificate for Passive Authentication, a ZKP can prove that the passport is genuine and has not been tampered with, without needing to expose the digital certificate itself.

Selective Disclosure: For applications requiring specific attributes (e.g., name for booking, but not the entire passport details), ZKPs can prove that the data matches the encrypted information on the chip without revealing the full details.

Holonym V3 Powers a New On-Chain Identity Economy

Private Identity Proofs: V3 enables full KYC verification without disclosing one's identity via photo or video to a third party. Users can verify their passports through NFC directly on their devices, eliminating the need for a third-party identity provider and significantly reducing minting costs. This method is resistant to AI challenges in eKYC, and you wouldn't have to scan your eyeballs to prove your identity. 

Private Web Account Proofs: Users can now prove ownership of specific online accounts (e.g., email, web accounts) with selective disclosure. These identity data points, while not containing Personally Identifiable Information (PII), provide strong identity verification signals. VOLE-based proofs streamline the process of creating arbitrary proofs, expanding Holonym’s DID stack capabilities. This method also simplifies the user's task of introducing arbitrary facts as on-chain proofs. 

Organizations/dapps: As in V1, organizations can enjoy the features of not needing to keep user data secure on their servers, onboarding unique persons to distribute rewards, enable one-person one-vote, unlock access, geogating, and more. All this through a seamless experience. Now that Holonym is part of Silk, dApps can onboard users through Web2 UI with email/oauth logins, and identity verification through Holonym. 

Private State Proofs: V3 allows for the efficient proof of Ethereum state for private smart contracts. This means a user can privately prove they have funds on one chain as a pre-condition to execute an action on another chain. These state proofs add a new dimension to DeFi with privacy. You can keep your collateral on one chain but privately take out a loan on another chain without any links between the two accounts.

Private Cross-Chain Abstraction: It enables the provision of state proofs about any message from any blockchain ecosystem privately. This is particularly useful for seamlessly bridging funds between chains without revealing the source or destination of these funds. This can be done with ZK KYC as a precondition to curtail bad actors hiding from enforcement.