human.tech, a privacy-focused identity and “proof-of-personhood” project backed by Holonym Foundation, said it has begun a second season of its HUMN onchain SUMR community campaign—pivoting from basic “are you human?” verification toward user contributions, shared principles and an emerging governance structure.
The new phase centers on what the group calls the “Covenant of Humanistic Technologies,” which it describes as both a living charter for human-aligned technology and a curated body of community submissions—ranging from essays and research to art—that could later feed into a DAO-style governance model for grants and long-term direction.
The initiative lands at a moment when crypto applications, airdrops and onchain communities are increasingly grappling with automated accounts, Sybil attacks and deepfake-driven fraud—problems that have pushed developers to experiment with “proof-of-personhood” systems that can gate access to voting, incentives or scarce resources without forcing users into fully public, doxxed identities.
From “proof” to “participation”
Season 2 is framed as an attempt to turn identity infrastructure into a broader social layer. On its manifesto site, human.tech outlines a flow that begins with reading the Covenant and signing a declaration, then verifying “proof of humanity,” and finally submitting “artifacts”—with the site suggesting that “real humans” may be able to earn a token labeled $HUMN through contributions.
In the announcement shared by human.tech, the project said Season 1 drew 68,800 unique participants interacting with Human Passport and resulted in more than 38,000 “Human Passport scores” minted onchain across networks including Base, Arbitrum, Optimism, Linea, zkSync and Scroll. The group is now asking participants not only to verify they are human, but also to contribute to what it wants to become a culture-and-governance layer built around privacy-preserving participation.
you can join the campaign: manifest.human.tech
The rails: Human Passport and zero-knowledge identity
The campaign builds on Human Passport, a Sybil-resistance and identity-verification toolkit that originated as Gitcoin Passport and was later brought under Holonym’s umbrella. In February 2025, Holonym said it had acquired Gitcoin Passport and launched human.tech as a broader suite spanning keys, wallets and identity tools, positioning Passport as a core product for distributing capital and access to “real humans” rather than bots.
Holonym has pitched the stack as relying heavily on applied cryptography—particularly zero-knowledge proofs—to let users demonstrate properties about themselves (such as uniqueness or eligibility) without revealing the underlying personal data. Its Human ID documentation describes a system designed to verify facts about identity without organizations storing sensitive information.
The “privacy-preserving” angle is central to the project’s pitch: rather than traditional KYC processes that collect and retain identity documents, human.tech argues that identity proofs can be generated and checked in ways that minimize surveillance and linkability.
Use cases: from airdrops to governance
Human Passport has been used as a gating mechanism in several crypto contexts where one-person-one-vote or fair access matters. In one case study, the project said Passport helped secure governance participation for Optimism’s Citizens’ House by requiring a threshold “Passport score” to reduce Sybil risk, aiming to align voting with unique humans rather than token-weighted influence.
Holonym has also marketed Passport as infrastructure for “safe and fair token distributions,” saying it has been used across a wide set of campaigns. In its 2025 announcement, Holonym said Human Passport had produced tens of millions of credentials and supported the distribution of more than $225 million in grants and airdrops across numerous campaigns—figures that, if accurate, would place it among the larger identity products in crypto by usage.
Season 2’s emphasis on “artifacts” and an emerging DAO structure suggests the organization is now trying to extend that identity layer into a community coordination model—one that can, in theory, determine who is eligible not only for access but also for influence and resource allocation.
Holonym is backed by Finality Capital and Paper Ventures
In 2024, Holonym raised $5.5 million seed round led by Finality Capital and Paper Ventures, alongside other crypto venture backers.
Since then, the foundation has expanded the human.tech brand to include multiple components—Human Passport, Human ID and related tooling—arguing that a privacy-preserving identity layer is a prerequisite for onchain systems to scale without being overwhelmed by automation and fraud.
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