Humanity Protocol, a decentralized identity solution, has raised $30 million (roughly Rs. 250 crore) in a new round of funding led by Kingsway Capital, and the startup has reached unicorn status with a valuation crossing the $1 billion (roughly Rs. 8,350 crore) mark. . More than 20 other venture capital firms participated in the seed funding round, including Animoca Brands, Blockchain.com, Hashed and Shima Capital. The startup competes with Worldcoin, a rival service that has faced legal challenges in several regions.
Decentralized Identity (DID) solutions aim to authenticate users and entities without a central authority. In order to capture the uniqueness of each individual, Humanity Protocol collects palm scans of individuals. These scans are stored on the blockchain and a proof of humanity is issued to confirm that the holder of that identity is really a human and not a bot.
“Proof-of-Personhood is a powerful concept, but the solutions that exist today have not been adopted because onboarding is invasive and has major problems,” wrote Terence Kwok, founder of Humanity Protocol in a blog post. “The world needs a truly self-sovereign identity framework built on the first principles of inclusivity, privacy and decentralization.”
The Humanity Protocol’s Proof of Humanity (PoH) consensus mechanism aims to mitigate the risks of identity fraud and Sybil attacks. This brings a layer of trust and credibility to human individuals within real-world decentralized networks.
Explaining why proof of identity is a promising concept, Kwok’s Medium post said, “PoH allows users to perform various transactions, such as confirming ownership of real assets, accessing limited services, or proving their education and employment history, without having to disclose their personal information to third parties. sides.”
The blockchain ID project also claims that the implementation of PoH could make activities like the distribution of universal basic income fairer because these transactions are linked to real human beings.
Lately, however, these controversial decentralized identity projects have drawn criticism and concern from several governments around the world.
One similar such project is Worldcoin founded by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman. Using iris scans of people’s eyes, Altman plans to generate a unique global identification of individuals, which would eliminate the need for them to present their IDs such as names or email IDs to interact with computers and machines, while ensuring that the holder of this ID is – and truly human. The project has been perceived as intrusive and currently faces legal hurdles in countries such as Nairobi and Italy.
