Passport is now part of human.tech

Kyle here, co-founder of Gitcoin and Passport XYZ. I am so pleased to announce the next major milestone for Passport is that we have been acquired by Holonym Foundation to complete its human.tech suite of products. We are joining forces with an incredible team that has some of the best technology in the identity space, and a highly aligned mission to advance human sovereignty in digital spaces.

This means, Passport’s now over 2M users, with over 35M identity credentials, will take advantage of the Human Network (previously Mishti Network) with the ability to utilize zk proofs to create decentralized credentials. Here are some details on how we got to this outcome, and why I am so excited.

Details of Passport XYZ’s spin out and why we’re now part of Holonym’s human.tech

In December of 2023, we (the Gitcoin Foundation and the Passport Workstream Lead) decided we should spin out Passport. This was when we also decided to shut down the Public Goods Network (PGN), and focus the efforts of Gitcoin on Grants. The next few months were spent aligning on what would need to be true to successfully spin Passport out, and enable the workstream to focus on unique humanity proofs.

In spring of 2024 I joined Passport as CEO to partner with Jeremy Dillingham to run the business. Jeremy was already running Passport as the workstream lead and had proven he was able to grow the number of users, and simultaneously grow revenue in an industry that rarely focuses on revenue. We went on a fund raising tour, talking to lots and lots of people. The goal was to raise sufficient capital to grow Passport’s users, and revenue such that we could define our protocol & determine if token made sense. What we discovered after about a hundred conversations was that despite the incredible name (ie, Gitcoin Passport), the traction we had (1.25M Passports, and around 75 partners), the revenue we were making (just under $1M at this time) and the strong team... It wasn’t enough to raise. The feedback we heard when pressing folks was that we didn't have a technology moat, or a protocol yet, but to come back when we did.

In late summer of 2024, we sat down with Shady and Nanak (the Holonym Foundation Founders) and talked about what an acquisition might look like as we had already partnered deeply with their team. These conversations showed that they were receptive and that there was interest given our strong traction and their strong technology. Holonym had recently raised to support the growth of their AVS backed protocol Human Network (previously Mishti Network) - a Human Keys derivation solution. After chatting with a few other entities in the identity space, we decided to move forward with Holonym given the alignment of vision and the combined appetite to truly impact humanity. We started to map out how to grow the businesses and play to our strengths on both the technology side and the traction side.

In December of 2024, the combination of Passport and Holonym was completed and now the new combined organization is launching human.tech, and the Human Network. I would love for you all to check it out, and help amplify the message so that we can continue to build crypto ecosystems where you can interact with known humans in non-doxxing ways. As AI agents become more prevalent, solutions like Passport will continue to be invaluable, and with human.tech, privacy and scalability through ZK technology is possible.

More comprehensive solutions are launching

Holonym was founded with a very specific mission: the foundation of digital natural rights to ownership, privacy, personhood, and security–enforced not by institutions, but by cryptography. With Passport in the portfolio of solutions, we've made significant progress, and with it, a large impact. Human Passport becomes the Proof of Personhood solution that offers users flexibility in how they prove their unique humanity.

As Passport and Holonym combine forces, you will see more comprehensive humanity solutions come to market. Tactically this means the Human Network is now online (and backed both by Eigenlayer and Symbiotic), and Human Passport (in lieu of Gitcoin Passport) is migrating credential creation to leverage ZK technology, and we will do it in a way that allows us to continue the deduplication of credentials.

As for the Passport team — Jeremy & I will continue to advance Passport and join the Holonym leadership team as well as most of our talented team member will stay onboard. We are excited for the impact we expect to have given the powerful combination of ZK tech with the traction and momentum of Human Passport. Furthering online digital rights through Holonym’s mission aligns to the vision we had for Passport.

To learn more about the future we have planned, you can check out the blog post over on Holonym’s human.tech site. Thank you so much for the support, and for the continued faith in the future we are co-creating.