Private Credentials

Zeronym is a privacy-preserving identity protocol developed by Holonym Foundation. It uses zero knowledge proofs to allow proving facts about oneself without revealing the whole identity. It allows organizations and smart contracts to verify their users without storing their users' sensitive information.

Motivation

Often, identity verification is required for legal or practical reasons such as KYC, fraud prevention, proof-of-age, and Sybil resistance. However, developing an application that preserves privacy has historically been difficult. This problem is biggest in web3, where most data is on a public ledger. Not only is obtaining privacy on a public ledger difficult, but the adverse affects of losing privacy are greater: "doxxing" a user's wallet address once reveals all of the address' past and future activity.

Holonym is a private credential system that make privacy-preserving identity possible and simple both on- and off-chain.

Privacy-preserving proofs

A user can prove a variety of statements with a Holo, without revealing their identity. These include facts needed for compliance, Sybil resistance, and wallet recovery. Example statements are:

"I have US residency"

"I have non-US residency"

"I have never received this airdrop from any other crypto address"

"I am an accredited investor"

"I am over 18"

"I am the same person who created this wallet" if the wallet needs recovery

"I have never voted in this DAO's governance"

Many of these are currently ready, and others can be enabled by contacting us and/or contributing to our GitHub

Note: Proof generation currently takes about 30ms-4s on standard consumer devicies. The variance dependings on the type of proof and type of device

For using Holonym in your (d)App, continue to

Start Here

Otherwise, take a peak into the architecture of Holonym

Overview