World rival Humanity inches closer to mainnet with foundation launch

Humanity Protocol, a major competitor to the digital identity project World, inched closer to its token generation event (TGE) by launching the Humanity Foundation.

On Jan. 14, the Humanity Foundation, led by its founding directors including Animoca Brands chairman Yat Siu, was launched to serve as a key driver in the Humanity Protocol’s ecosystem, according to an announcement shared with Cointelegraph.

Humanity Protocol is focused on providing decentralized identity (DID) and zero-knowledge proofs (ZK-proofs), enabling users to verify their unique identities without exposing personal data to anyone, including the Humanity Protocol.

Using biometric technology, Humanity Protocol enables users to customize their verified identities with additional credentials such as education, employment history and social reputation.

Biometrics isn’t stored on any centralized server

In addition to Animoca’s Siu, Humanity Foundation’s founding directors include Mario Nawfal, founder of International Blockchain Consulting, and Yeewai Chong, an investment professional from Morgan Stanley and Ortus Capital, who will also serve as interim CEO of the foundation.

“Biometrics provide the ideal starting point for building a secure, decentralized identity system,” Chong said, adding that anchoring proof-of-humanity (PoH) in biometric verification enables the integration of diverse human attributes into a single, privacy-first identity framework.

According to Humanity Protocol founder Terence Kwok, Humanity’s technology allows individuals to retain full ownership and control over their information.

“Humanity ensures that identity attestations, such as biometrics, aren’t stored on any centralized server,” Kwok told Cointelegraph.

Instead, Kwok noted, the biometric data would be encrypted and stored in Humanity’s zkProofers or distributed nodes enabled in the second phase of the testnet rollout.

Humanity vs. World: How are they different?

Launched from stealth in 2024, Humanity Protocol introduces palm recognition technology for verifying individuals in Web3, focusing on preserving data privacy.

Following the foundation launch, Humanity has yet to disclose the date of the token generation event, according to Kwok.

Humanity’s key competitor, World (formerly Worldcoin), was launched in July 2023 by Tools for Humanity, a software firm co-founded by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman.

Unlike Humanity’s palm recognition technology, World implements iris biometric technology, which uses mathematical pattern-recognition techniques on video images of one or both of the irises of an individual’s eyes.

Related: World announces 10M users verified on World Network

According to Humanity’s Kwok, the main difference between World and Humanity is that the latter uses palm scans instead of iris scans.

Compared with iris scans, the palm recognition tech offers robust privacy protections and is “less invasive while still ensuring security,” Kwok said, adding:

“Unlike iris scans, which can feel intrusive and raise additional privacy concerns, palm scans are more user-friendly while maintaining a high level of security. Users are far more familiar with biometric authentication involving their palm and fingerprints than their iris code.”

Responding to user preferences and accessibility in such a way also means that PoH can be deployed at scale to organizations looking to incorporate palm scan payments, building and even access and other real-world applications, Kwok noted.

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