Rarimo raises $2.5M to advance zero knowledge proof-of-personhood

Zero-knowledge digital identity protocol Rarimo has raised $2.5 million in a “vision round” which the company describes as “founder-only.”

The company is targeting the proof-of-personhood market with its blockchain-based decentralized digital identity technology. The company is also planning a migration to Ethereum in early-2025, crypto.news reports.

Ethereum Co-founder Vitalik Buterin is the big name among Rarimo’s new backers.

“Rarimo’s identity model of zk-wrapping existing proof-of-personhood methods and building applications on top, allowing users to prove important facts about who they are without fully disclosing their identity, is a promising strategy to achieve both goals at the same time,” he says.

Rarimo also plans to continue the development of its self-custody digital wallet, known as RariMe, which generates zero-knowledge proofs (ZKPs) for identity verification.

Users register by scanning a biometric passport in the app, which stores the facial photograph for future biometric authentications. Passports must also be re-verified every few months.

Rarimo protocol developer Rarilabs raised $10 million in a series A round in 2022 that valued it at $100 million.

The contested result of the recent national election in Georgia may determine the fate of a digital government solution developed by Rarilabs.

Georgian coalition party United National Movement partnered with Rarilabs to develop a solution on blockchain called “United Space,” which Cointelegraph writes is intended to provide a national digital identity and streamline the delivery of all government services. In addition to easing access to public services, which currently depend largely on in-person appointments, the platform is intended to aid public participation in civil affairs.

Holonym Co-founder Shady El Damaty sets out another approach to ZKPs with some important differences in a recent interview with TheStreet. The company’s zero-knowledge digital identity protocol based on deriving keys from users’ biometrics has generated $1.5 million in revenue so far, and its zero-knowledge protocol Zeronym has added about 10,000 users since August.

ZKPs a fly-swatting bazooka?

Kilt CEO and Co-founder Ingo Rübe told Cointelegraph in late-October that the complexity of ZKPs is a barrier to their adoption. Further, they are often built on open-source software that may be less secure than advertised.

Making decentralized identity work through ZKPs is, he says, “like taking a bazooka and trying to kill a fly.”

In their place, he suggests a system in which a public permissionless blockchain stores the validity of credentials, which are owned, stored and created by each user. Identity verification would be carried out on chain with Merkle Trees.

A week later, Leo Fan, co-founder of ZK hardware provider Cysic, argued in the same publication that ZKPs are more cost efficient than legacy digital ID systems operated by centralized institutions. Advances in hardware and proof generation have reduced costs and processing time for ZKPs, he says, with proofs now being generated in around 10 seconds.

Article Topics

biometrics  |  blockchain  |  decentralized identifiers (DIDs)  |  digital identity  |  identity verification  |  proof of personhood  |  Rarimo  |  zero knowledge