Delaware, United States, August 16, 2024, Chainwire

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

Holonym Foundation, an organization building the next generation of digital identity security for the decentralized web, announces the completion of a successful $5.5 million seed funding round. The funding round was led by Finality Capital and Paper Ventures, with significant participation from Draper Dragon, Arrington Capital, Lightshift, Zero Knowledge Ventures, Zero DAO, and other prominent funds.

Shady El Damaty, co-founder of Holonym, said: “We are building core person-first principles into the technology we deploy to the world. Our goal is to build a global open-source layer that enhances the skills of every citizen with basic access to a digital identity using cryptography to prove their personhood.”

“We cannot have self-sovereign control over 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, control, and selectively share their data with strong privacy and security guarantees. Holonym will be part of the solution to bring the next trillion dollars of assets 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 constructed 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 turn people into keys. This new framework shifts the ownership of digital assets from the holder of a random seed to the human who can uniquely prove their biometrics. Human keys make the ownership layers of the internet built upon it more user-friendly, decentralized, and secure.

Human Keys incorporates three protocols developed by the Holonym Foundation, all of which have security and robust data protection systems as core principles:

• Mishti Network, a groundbreaking threshold entropy network that computes an Oblivious Pseudorandom Function (OPRF) on biometric data.
• This allows people to derive arbitrary, secure keys that are difficult to steal. It also enables private homomorphic computation on encrypted data, allowing untrusted third parties to verify users without ever seeing the underlying data.
• This is an actively validated service (AVS) on Eigenlayer with cryptoeconomic mechanisms that leverage the economic security of the Ethereum network.
• Zeronym, a zero-knowledge identity protocol, uses human keys to allow anyone in the world to secretly prove facts about their identity.
• More than 125,000 pseudonymous Zeronym users worldwide have unlocked these rights, proving their unique personality, whereabouts, and other attributes, creating a rich digital reputation that only they own and control.
• Silk, a simple and elegant user interface for interacting with crypto protocols.
• Silk makes human keys usable in the real world by the everyday Internet user.
• Silk offers 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, like your face. It’s what you have, what you know, and what you are: your property, your memory, and your body. In today’s centralized web, we give away ownership of our data for free. Web3 should be the space where we provide robust data ownership and secure personality sharing so that no one else can own your data but you.”

By giving every person in the world a secure key that only they can own and control, the Holonym Foundation is taking a step toward global digital inclusion, especially at a time when advances in artificial intelligence threaten to leave so many people behind.

Shady El Damaty, co-founder of Holonym, says this is just the beginning for the Holonym Foundation. “Human Keys will redefine the way citizens interact with the internet by limiting power overreach and strengthening individual rights with resilient decentralized protocols built on Zeronym and Mishti Network.”

Holonym Foundation focuses on innovative applied cryptography that provides solutions to real-world problems.

About the Holonym Foundation

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

Holonym Foundation 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 regulated industries in the real world.

Side. 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 secure self-custody wallet that can be recovered without trusted guardians.

Null word. Proof of personality 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. Enterprises can use Zeronym for privacy-preserving KYC/AML with programmable privacy for continuous monitoring.

CONTACT & SOCIAL MEDIA

For PR inquiries, users can contact (email address)

Users can stay in touch with Holonym Foundation and its products:

🌐 holonym.id, mishti.network, silk.sc

✖️X Holonym | zero0nym | Mishti Network | Side

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

💼 Holonym Linkedin

✍️ Holonym Medium

📝 Holonym on Paragraph

🎥 Holonym YouTube

🎙️ Farcaster | ‌holonym | nullonym | silky

📝 Holonym on Discord

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