human.tech: A Framework for Privacy-Preserving Identity and Human-Aligned Technology

Jul 30, 2025

Want a quick overview? Jump to the end for a 60-second overview of human.tech: what it is, why it matters, and where it’s being used today.

human.tech is an open cryptographic framework for human flourishing, by empowering individuals with privacy, security, and data ownership, built directly into the infrastructure of the internet. Developed and stewarded by Holonym Foundation, human.tech operationalizes privacy, key ownership, and digital personhood through modular cryptographic tools: Human Keys, self-custodial wallets, and zk-based identity systems.

These tools create a resilient coordination human layer that enables capital to flow through grants, aid, and payments without middlemen, bots, or surveillance. human.tech is grounded in applied cryptography and anchored by the Human Network, which is secured by Ethereum’s shared economic trust, to make these digital rights enforceable.

Identity here is built on public key infrastructure and privacy-preserving cryptographic technologies. It is modular, plural, and context-aware. An on-chain footprint may serve as identity for airdrops or governance; a zero-knowledge proof on a government-signed ePassport may verify a voter anonymously; personhood from a verified email paired with biometric authentication may suffice for delivering aid to the undocumented in a vulnerable environment.

Privacy in human.tech is not defined by secrecy alone, but by the plurality of identity, user consent, and context through programmable and cryptographic verifiability. human.tech provides the infrastructure to empower individuals with self-custody and digital personhood, built for a future where digital ownership and privacy are more important than ever.

This post will cover the entire product suite of human.tech.

Human Network & Human Keys

The Human Network is the bedrock of human.tech, a decentralized threshold network built as an Autonomous Verifiable Service (AVS), secured by Ethereum’s shared economic trust via Eigenlayer and Symbiotic, with over $1.4B in restaked ETH backing the system. Human Network distributively computes a verifiable oblivious pseudorandom function (vOPRF), a cryptographic primitive that enables secure, privacy-preserving key generation to enable perfect crypto onboarding.

This infrastructure enables users to generate Human Keys from familiar, human-authenticated inputs like biometrics, email, or secret knowledge without requiring the hassle of seed phrases or relying on centralized dependencies that sacrifice self-custody. The network collaboratively computes over masked user data, ensuring that no single node ever sees the underlying inputs or can collude to extract them.

This approach ensures Human Keys are:

  • Secure – Resistant to attacks and quantum-safe

  • Private – Derived without revealing personal data

  • Persistent – Re-derivable anytime via the decentralized network with high uptime

  • Recoverable – Restorable through human-friendly factors, with no centralized dependency

While this architecture offers a familiar and minimal onboarding experience, its deeper value lies in how Human Network enables decentralized computation over personal data without revealing it or allowing node-level collusion. This makes it possible to repurpose the same network with the same cryptographic guarantees and shared economic trust to power other use cases where privacy is integral: zero-knowledge identity protocols and programmable privacy for compliance and decentralised access controls. These functions depend on human data being processed securely and privately without introducing surveillance risks, backdoor access, or centralized honeypots.

Use Cases

Intuitive Keys for Easier Onboarding

Distributed Key Generation for wallets using familiar login methods for one-click onboarding and easier authentication. This abstracts away the complexity of key management, enabling self-custodial, cross-device-compatible access without the need for seed phrases. dApps can use Human Keys for simple logins by white-labeling the flow through a human.tech’s Human Wallet, with minimal development overhead and full brand control.

Programmable Keys for Provable Encryption of Identity

Users can encrypt personal data while proving it was encrypted correctly, and set specific onchain conditions for when it may be decrypted. This is particularly relevant for use cases like compliance or under-collateralized lending.

Live on: Aztec’s bridge.human.tech (ZK ID verification for clean asset bridging)

Keys for Zero Knowledge Nullifiers

Creates secure nullifiers (per user unique identifier) through decentralized computation of personal identifiers, where no single party sees the data or can link nullifiers back to users. Integral for zkTLS protocols, zk identity proofs generated from ePassports, and any decentralized identity protocol that hashes personal data.

Live on: Keys for Reclaim Protocol (zkTLS) and Human Passport’s 35M+ credentials

Human Passport

Incentives drive web3. Protocols depend on token-based rewards to bootstrap usage, grow communities, govern participation, and enable capital formation. But without a way to distinguish real users from bots, these systems can’t sustain themselves. Sybil attacks distort metrics, drain capital, and undermine legitimacy.

Web3 identity needs its own solution, one that preserves privacy, adapts to context, and scales with trust assumptions. Web2 style verification leaks data. Onchain only signals are easy to manipulate. A single, universal identity risks exclusion, surveillance, and deplatforming.

Human Passport is built for web3, shaped by years of frontline experience defending Gitcoin’s quadratic funding from an infinite loop of Sybil attacks. Human Passport enables anyone to prove uniqueness without revealing personal data, using a modular verification stack that adapts to protocol needs. This includes aggregated, credential-based stamps for calculating a Unique Humanity Score; real-time behavioral models that assess Sybil risk without prompting the user; data services for wallet clustering and segmentation; and direct zero-knowledge verification methods for privacy-preserving compliance and legal personhood, without exposing sensitive data.

Protocols choose the identity model that matches their risk profile, incentive structure, and community norms. Human Passport provides the infrastructure to make verification modular, privacy-preserving, and adaptable to custom user experience flows.

Human Passport Toolkit

Human Passport provides a modular stack for Sybil resistance and identity verification, designed to adapt to the specific trust requirements of protocols, DAOs, and applications.

Passport Stamps are real-time verifiable credentials aggregated from onchain activity, social attestations, KYC, biometrics, and more. They contribute to a customizable Unique Humanity Score and can be accessed via API or onchain if minted by the user. Stamps' user flow can be customized to branding needs, programmable, and embeddable. Passport’s web3-native captcha flow is currently in development.

Passport Models use machine learning to assess Sybil risk in real time, operating entirely in the background without prompting the user. Trained on the real wallet data, they analyze wallet behavior across chains and are frequently used for airdrop gating, governance filtering, and pre-screening in high-volume campaigns. We support multiple chain-specific models, including Ethereum, Base, Optimism, and Arbitrum, as well as the crosschain Aggregate Model combining the scores.

Data Services allow teams to submit wallet lists for large-scale clustering, segmentation, and retention analysis. Used heavily in airdrop planning, these services deliver Sybil risk scores, wallet groupings, and loyalty insights with no onchain integration required.

Human ID uses direct zk verification to support rigorous identity checks through zero-knowledge proofs for government-issued IDs, phone verification, and Proof of Clean Hands. Built on the Human Network, these proofs enforce programmable privacy for compliance through onchain integrity checks.

These tools are composable. Projects can mix and match methods based on user experience and campaign goals.

Use Cases

For their $IP airdrop, Story Protocol implemented Sybil resistance with Human Passport in two phases: early resistance through Passport Stamps during testnet, followed by a multi-layered filter at mainnet with Data Services, using machine learning and behavioral clustering. High-quality wallets received immediate, frictionless access; ambiguous wallets were routed through a Custom Passport flow for secondary verification; and high-risk addresses were excluded.

Over 120 partners have already trusted Human Passport with their campaign security, and the numbers keep growing.

Human Wallet

Human Wallet is human.tech’s self-custodial wallet, built on Human Keys and secured through Two-Party Computation (2PC), enforcing the right to security with a user-centric interface and seamless access. Users onboard with one-click using familiar credentials and recover access without seed phrases, social accounts, or centralized dependencies.

Traditional self-custody relies on fragile seed phrases, whereas Wallet-as-a-Service (WaaS) solutions improve UX but introduce centralized chokepoints and broader attack surfaces through opaque implementations.

Human Wallet offers a new paradigm for onboarding by enabling one-click onboarding and decentralizing seedless key generation through Human Keys, and provides cryptographic security through 2PC’s user-controlled authorization for every transaction.

2PC: An Emergent Security Framework

Signing keys are split via 2PC, where one share is held by the user, the other by the server on a trusted execution environment (TEE) with minimal attack surface. The full key is never reconstructed, and every transaction requires explicit user approval.

2PC enables programmable security by verifying every user-signed transaction through transaction simulation and policy engines. 2PC enforces transaction limits, spending rules, and custom logic, ensuring that even if the device, dApp, or frontend is compromised, 2PC protects the user from unauthorized transactions. Blind signing, responsible for major crypto exploits, has been prevented by Human Wallet by using your hardware wallet as a secondary authorization method for high-risk transactions, displaying clear, human-readable warnings about potential threats.

Learn more about Human Wallet’s blind signing protection here.

Human Wallet’s security doesn’t stand in the way of convenience, but rather, the security model improves the user experience.

Soon, 2PC will evolve into 2PC-MPC via Ika by replacing the server share with a decentralized network that distributes signing authority across hundreds of nodes, supporting over 10,000 signatures per second, unlike legacy MPC schemes that sacrifice performance or control.

Human Wallet vs WaaS

Rather than fragmenting the user experience like WaaS, where a separate wallet is spun up for each app, Human Wallet offers a single, composable, universal wallet that works across devices and applications. Unlike rent-seeking WaaS models, Human Wallet’s revenue model is tied to user activity on the Human Network, not per-user wallet creation or custodial lock-in.

Human Wallet also features an integrated Gas Tank, allowing users to pre-fund fees and transact across networks without worrying about gas, approvals, or network switching.

For developers building on top of Human Wallet, the wallet flow can be white-labeled to match your app’s brand, with minimal development overhead and full control over the user experience.

Live Use Case

Relay ID, a project by Refunite and human.tech, uses Human Wallet to deliver direct humanitarian aid. Personhood credentials are created from verified email and later validated peer-to-peer by community members to onboard recipients into the community network. With WhatsApp chatbot for onboarding and payments, Face ID recovery, and seamless authentication, Relay ID delivers a low-tech interface powered by high-impact infrastructure, built for low-connectivity, resource-constrained environments. Relay ID is currently being piloted in Rwanda and Uganda.

About human.tech

human.tech is a tech framework designed to enhance personal freedom, privacy, and financial autonomy. human.tech provides innovative solutions for secure identity, data ownership, and private transactions, ensuring that technology remains a tool for human empowerment.

https://human.tech

What is human.tech?

human.tech by Holonym Foundation is building better tools for people to be safe, private, and in control of their identity online. It helps you prove who you are without giving up your data.

It gives you secure keys, wallets, and ID tools that are private by default and built for the real world.

Key Products

Human Keys

  • Log in and use crypto apps with your email, face, or secret—no seed phrase needed.

  • Your keys are private, secure, and easy to recover.

  • Powered by a decentralized network, Human Network, not a single company.

  • Secured by Ethereum as an AVS on Symbiotic and EigenLayer.

Human Passport

  • Prove you’re a real person (not a bot) without showing private info.

  • Used in token airdrops, grants, voting, and more to stop fake accounts.

  • Trusted by 150+ web3 projects.

Human Wallet

  • A wallet that’s safe and easy to use.

  • One-click login, no seed phrase, full control.

  • Built-in security stops hacks and blind signing, powered by 2PC MPC.

  • Gas Tank lets you pay fees easily across chains.

Why It Matters

human.tech combats bots and fraud on the internet and lets anyone own and control their identity. Enables aid, payments, and access for people everywhere, even those without an ID.

Live Example

Relay ID uses human.tech to send humanitarian aid directly to real people in places like Rwanda and Uganda, via WhatsApp, with no app needed.

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