At Paris Blockchain Week, Holonym’s CEO – Shady El Damaty – shared a bold vision: making digital identity not just a tool for Web3 participation, but a gateway to distributing humanitarian aid globally.
While digital identity is a familiar topic in crypto circles, Holonym is going several steps further—embedding personhood into wallets, credentials, and what it calls “human keys.”
What Is Holonym?
Explained simply, Holonym builds digital infrastructure that lets people prove who they are online—safely, privately, and without relying on centralized institutions. The company has issued over 35.4 million credentials for more than 2.2 million users, helping both Web3 projects and broader humanitarian efforts distinguish humans from bots.
One of the major use cases has been airdrops—Holonym has supported over $380 million in token distributions across more than 150 projects. But that’s just the start.
From Airdrops to Aid Drops
Beyond speculative token distributions, Holonym sees its identity tools as a way to get direct aid into the hands of real people. In many regions where aid is needed most, traditional identity systems or financial literacy aren’t reliable. That’s where Holonym’s “human keys” come in.
They function like private cryptographic keys but are derived from human attributes rather than random sequences. For example, instead of needing to memorize a complex seed phrase, a person could generate a wallet from a biometric scan. This makes it possible for someone with no email access or formal ID to interact with digital finance systems.
As a result, wallets become more accessible, identities become provable, and crypto becomes human-friendly—all critical for bringing billions into the digital economy who have been historically excluded.
The Gitcoin Passport Acquisition
Holonym also recently acquired Gitpoint Passport, a widely used identity solution for grants and matching funds that utilize quadratic funding. Gitpoint had already facilitated $60–80 million in grants. The core idea of quadratic funding is to support the most popular community-chosen projects, rather than those with the richest backers.
However, the system had a flaw: bots could exploit it. Holonym’s identity layer now ensures each vote is tied to a real person—without compromising privacy.
As part of the acquisition, Gitpoint Passport is being rebranded as The Human Passport, and will now include zero-knowledge proofs (ZK) by default. This means personhood verification can happen privately and securely.
More importantly, Holonym plans to extend The Human Passport beyond Web3, using it for capital allocation in the real world—whether it’s aid, grants, or social impact projects.
Thoughts on the Market
Despite uncertain market conditions, Holonym remains focused on building.
“The crypto cat is out of the box,” Shady El Damaty noted, describing today’s cycle as a normal swing of a volatile but maturing space. With regulatory clarity improving and infrastructure maturing, Holonym believes the next step for crypto is to prove itself through real-world utility—especially in capital allocation and digital rights.
Their endgame? Elevating financial freedom by making it accessible to all—not just those who understand DeFi, but anyone with a smartphone and a fingerprint.
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