Reclaiming the Digital Future: How Cryptography Can Anchor Digital Human Rights
Apr 8, 2025
In an era where technology is accelerating faster than society can adapt, we’re left asking a vital question: what does it mean to be human in the digital age?
At the Internet Archive—a space where history, knowledge, and possibility converge— human.tech by Holonym Foundation co-founder Shady El Damaty delivered a timely call to action. This wasn’t just a talk about privacy or decentralization. It was about building the future of digital rights from the ground up—rooted in cryptography, and powered by humanity.
What to Expect in This Post
In this article, we break down key themes from Shady’s presentation, including:
• Why we need a new framework for human rights in the digital age
• How cryptography can secure identity, agency, and access
• The vision behind human.tech, an open protocol for digital personhood
• The role of the Human Network in key recovery and identity verification
• Real-world deployment through Refunite and the impact on global aid
• The urgent need for shared values before technology accelerates further
Whether you’re a technologist, policymaker, or simply a conscious digital citizen, this conversation lays the groundwork for the world we’re stepping into.
Technology is Moving Fast—Are We Ready?
As Shady opened, he acknowledged a collective discomfort: technology is progressing rapidly, while the frameworks meant to guide and protect us struggle to keep up. There’s a growing vacuum around how human rights are understood and enforced in our digital lives.
This isn’t about slowing innovation—it’s about aligning it with a vision for human flourishing. What values do we want embedded in the infrastructure of our future?
Human Rights Meet Cryptography
For centuries, philosophers like Locke and Paine defined natural rights as self-evident. But in today’s context, those rights require new mechanisms for enforcement.
Cryptography offers exactly that. It’s not just about security—it’s a way to enforce commitments, prove authorship, and safeguard autonomy. It turns abstract values into technical guarantees.
Enter human.tech
Holonym’s new project, human.tech, is an open framework for creating enforceable digital human rights. It leverages cryptography to enable self-custodial identity—digital personhood untethered from states or corporations.
Key features include:
• Ownership of cryptographic keys
• Portable, institution-independent identity
• Tools to interact with decentralized systems safely and privately
The Human Network: Identity Rooted in Humanity
To ensure these identities can be easily accessed and recovered, Holonym created the Human Network—a persistent key availability protocol.
By combining elements like biometrics, personal memories, or other unique human traits, the Human Network allows users to derive and reauthenticate cryptographic keys based on who they are, not what they have.
This approach eliminates complex onboarding processes and makes identity accessible to anyone—regardless of technical literacy or infrastructure.
Refunite + Holonym: Identity for the Underserved
One of the most powerful real-world applications of this framework is human.tech’s collaboration with Refunite, an organization working to support displaced communities.
Together, they’re launching Relay ID, a system that empowers tribal leaders across Africa to coordinate and distribute aid to up to 150 million people—many of whom lack access to traditional banking or digital infrastructure.
Using simple tools like biometric verification and SMS, individuals can:
• Generate a secure cryptographic key
• Access direct payments and services
• Prove personhood without an email, app, or login
It’s low-tech in interface, high-tech in impact.
Capital Allocation and Pluralistic Protocols
Beyond identity and access, Shady emphasized the importance of building pluralistic systems—protocols that can adapt to local contexts while upholding core human rights.
This flexibility is critical when it comes to capital allocation, a challenge for anyone solving problems at scale. Cryptographic identity systems like human.tech can unlock smarter, more transparent flows of funding and support for public goods worldwide.
Co-Creating a Covenant for Humanistic Technology
Shady concluded with an invitation: to join in crafting a “living artifact” for the digital era—a covenant of shared values, powered by cryptography, that can guide how we build and scale human-centric technology.
Drawing inspiration from political thinkers of the past, the goal is to collectively shape digital jurisdictions and frameworks that reflect how we want humanity to thrive—not just function—in an increasingly digital world.
The Bottom Line:
We need to pause. To reflect. To realign.
Before accelerating technology any further, let’s decide what it should serve.
Let’s create systems that enshrine digital dignity.
Let’s build a world where rights are not granted—but proven, cryptographically and irrevocably.
Want to help shape this future?
We are accepting submissions of creative and high-quality artifacts that will be showcased on the human.tech manifestation web application and on our partner platforms.
✍️ Submit an Artifact to the Covenant: https://holonym.notion.site/1a3abe540a8f813781d2eb59005ba6e9
🎧 Listen to Shady’s Talk: Powering Human Coordination Networks with Keys, Identity, and Wallets
Thank you to Funding The Commons for being a wonderful partner in our mission.
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About human.tech
human.tech is a suite of technologies 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.
About Holonym Foundation
Holonym Foundation is committed to giving power back to individuals by embedding immutable natural rights into resilient digital frameworks. Through its groundbreaking suite of technologies under the human.tech brand, Holonym Foundation fosters privacy, security, and digital personhood in a borderless world.