Key Concepts
On Proof-of-Humanity and Verifiable Credentials.
Proof of Humanity (PoH) verifies that a person is truly human, and with this knowledge they can then be assigned any form of VCs that are digital certificates that confirm various aspects of a user's identity or status. Issued after verification, these credentials are stored on the blockchain and controlled entirely by the user.
In the context of Humanity Protocol, upon successful enrollment of one's palm, a VC would be received that proves one's status as a unique human. But they can also represent different aspects of enrollment so a type of VC can prove receipt of a decentralized ID, and another can confirm the uniqueness of a palm print (or vein scan) in the Humanity Protocol.
Beyond Proof-of-Humanity, other possible types of VCs include:
KYC Credentials
Employment Credentials
Educational Credentials
Proof of Residency
Financial Identity
Why Biometrics
In a digital world plagued by bots, fake accounts, and identity fraud, biometric data offers a powerful solution for proving human uniqueness. Unlike email or phone verification, biometrics—like fingerprints or palm scans—are tied to individuals in a way that’s nearly impossible to fake or duplicate. When combined with technologies like zero-knowledge proofs, biometrics can enhance both security and privacy, ensuring that only real humans interact in systems designed for real people—without compromising sensitive personal data.
Benefit
Why It Matters
Uniqueness
Biometric traits are unique to each individual, ensuring one-person-one-identity.
Sybil Resistance
Stops bots and fake accounts from gaming systems like voting or airdrops.
Frictionless UX
Fast and secure logins with no passwords or recovery processes.
Inclusivity
Enables people without formal IDs to participate in digital systems.
Persistence
Biometrics don’t change over time, enabling long-term identity stability.
Why Palm Recognition
Common biometric identification methods by computers include analyzing fingerprints, iris fractal patterns, and the genetic makeup of hair. While the analyses of these body traits stand out for their accuracy, it is time-consuming and resource-intensive. Furthermore, the advancement in AI deepfake technology as well as easily accessible images online of most individuals, means that for some cases the absolute certainty of liveness is difficult attain.
Consequently, palm scans and palm vein recognition has emerged as the preferred method. It uses the distinct lines and patterns on an individual's palm to establish a biometric identification system that is highly resistant to counterfeiting.
The H Token
The Humanity Protocol (HP) economic model is meticulously designed to encourage a secure, functional, and valuable token ecosystem, underpinned by a well-structured incentive system. Central to the Humanity Protocol ecosystem is the $H token, an ERC-20 token with a fixed supply cap of 10 billion divisible to 8 decimal places. The $H token not only fuels the blockchain operations as the gas token but also facilitates a wide array of essential functions within the ecosystem:
Humanity Attestation
Identity Verification
Credential Validation
Staking Rewards
DAO Governance
Coins for Humanity Rewards
The Role of Smart Contracts
Smart contracts form the backbone of Humanity Protocol’s decentralized identity architecture. These autonomous blockchain programs replace centralized authorities by encoding the rules for identity creation, verification, and credential management directly into immutable, self-executing logic. This shift removes the need to trust a single institution, ensuring that all actions—such as user registration and credential issuance—are transparently enforced and verifiable by any participant in the network.
By encoding identity governance into smart contracts, Humanity Protocol ensures a trust-minimized, transparent system with consistent, decentralized control. This enables seamless dApp integration and provides a reliable, censorship-resistant foundation for verifying human identity in Web3.
IPFS and decentralized storage
IPFS (InterPlanetary File System) is a decentralized, peer-to-peer file storage and sharing protocol designed to make the web faster, safer, and more open. Instead of using a central server to host files, IPFS distributes them across a network of computers (nodes). Files are identified by their content hash (a unique fingerprint), not their location (like a URL), which ensures data integrity and makes content easily shareable and resilient to censorship or server failure.
Humanity Protocol makes use of IPFS in order to store sensitive data such as encrypted user VC metadata / Encrypted Palm Signature preventing any single entity from having a full set of the metadata.
Ethereum Nodes
Ethereum nodes act as the secure foundation and gateway that anchors Humanity Protocol's specialized identity verification infrastructure to the established Ethereum ecosystem, ensuring trust, interoperability, and broad accessibility for human-centric Web3 applications.
Key Roles:
L2 Settlement Layer: Ethereum nodes process and finalize transactions from Humanity Protocol's Layer-2 zkEVM rollup, providing the ultimate security and immutability for identity verification operations.
Smart Contract Execution: Execute the core smart contracts that manage token operations ($H token), governance mechanisms, and cross-chain identity attestation services.
Decentralized Storage Integration: Facilitate connections to decentralized storage networks (like IPFS) for storing encrypted verifiable credentials and maintaining the distributed nature of identity data.
Bridge Infrastructure: Support the bridging mechanisms that allow other DApps and protocols to access Humanity Protocol's Proof of Humanity services, extending human verification capabilities beyond the native HP network.
Zero Knowledge Proofs and Humanity Protocol
In Humanity Protocol, zero-knowledge proofs (ZKPs) play a critical role in enabling privacy-preserving biometric identity.
ZKPs are cryptographic techniques that allow one party to prove to another that something is true—without revealing any underlying information. In Humanity Protocol, this means a user can prove they’ve enrolled their biometric (e.g. palm scan) and are a unique human, without exposing the biometric data itself.
The following table gives a summary of the main benefits
Concept
Explanation
Privacy
Raw biometric data is never revealed or stored on-chain—only a cryptographic proof is generated and shared.
Uniqueness
ZKP confirms the biometric hasn’t been used before, ensuring “one person, one account” without exposing identity.
Reusability
Users can prove uniqueness across dApps without re-submitting biometric data every time.
Interoperability
Proofs can be shared across Humanity Protocol-compatible platforms, allowing private but verified participation.
zKProofer Nodes
The zkProofer Nodes are a core part of Humanity Protocol’s Self-Sovereign Identity (SSI) system, responsible for verifying zero-knowledge proofs of user credentials without exposing personal data. These nodes authenticate verifiable credentials (VCs) and zero-knowledge presentations (VPs) during interactions with dApps, enabling privacy-preserving, decentralized identity verification. Operating without access to raw user data, they uphold stringent privacy standards while contributing to the Proof of Human Identity (PoH) consensus. Participation requires a zkProofer Node License, and verifications are confirmed through a decentralized, multi-node consensus process, reinforcing both trust and resilience in the system.
To ensure strong network participation, zkProofer Nodes are rewarded through a dual-incentive model: payouts in the native token ($H) from the Identity Verification Rewards Pool, and a 25% minimum share of verification fees from third-party integrations. A tiered system—Basic, OG, and Founder nodes—adds additional reward multipliers, allocated randomly to ensure fairness. Backed by an in-house AI trained on over 500,000 palm scans across global demographics, the protocol bridges physical and digital identity. zkProofer Nodes are essential to this mission, verifying humanity on-chain and powering real-world access through decentralized, biometric-backed credentials.
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