Holonym is a company that is building the foundation of digital rights: privacy, security, global access to finance, and personhood through applied cryptography. Pulse 2.0 interviewed Holonym co-founder Nanak Nihal Khalsa to learn more about the company.
Nanak Nihal Khalsa’s Background
Could you tell me more about your background? Khalsa said:
“I’ve had a circuitous route to get into crypto. I started programming at a young age, got into hacking, and building websites and apps that I thought could make a difference. For quite a few years, I wanted to study meditation, and frankly, I still want to. So I went into neuroscience and focused on computational neuroscience because I enjoyed the math and computer science aspects.
“Then I became super underwhelmed with academia, fell in love with cryptography and decentralization, and decided to build a company to use cryptography to make digital rights real. Careers are just a construct, you can do whatever you want if you are an entrepreneur; you just need to build a product with traction.”
Formation Of The Company
How did the idea for the company come together? Khalsa shared:
“Shady and I were doing a neuroscience hackathon, and he wanted to use IPFS to store large neural datasets. He had the coolest project idea so I joined his team and we hit it off. When we both finished grad school I started working with him at his nonprofit Opscientia dedicated to web3-enabled open science tools. We had a lot of fun and one tool, originally dubbed WTF Protocol, seemed better as a startup and standalone product, so we worked on it full-time, spinning it into what later became Holonym Foundation.”
Favorite Memory
What has been your favorite memory working for the company so far? Khalsa reflected:
“There are so many. Meeting your team in person whose face you have never seen before despite working with them for years, hanging with some of your biggest idols in some of the most random parts of the world, working with governments, spending a year toiling for funding, and making pacts to become homeless before closing the company then suddenly waking up with with a profitable company on track of millions of dollars in revenue. It’s such an adventure.”
Core Products
What are the company’s core products and features? Khalsa explained:
— Human ID– prove your personhood and your credentials without revealing who you are, to bring the right to privacy in the most invasive places.
— Human Wallet– a new paradigm in onboarding, one that doesn’t sacrifice web3 values of self-custody, or security. Human Wallet gives hardware-level security with the simplicity of a Google signin.
— Human Network – a decentralized network that enables “Human Keys,” used by Human ID and Human Wallet to give sovereignty and privacy to sensitive data and assets by deriving keys from human attributes.
Challenges Faced
Have you faced any challenges in your sector of work recently? Khalsa acknowledged:
“Most of our industry is primarily focused on speculating. Few builders work on real-world use cases. This is cool for us because we have some funding, and can now ignore the noise of whatever frivolous cycle is currently happening. So at least we have less competition on non-financial use cases, since now it seems everyone has given up on these.”
Evolution Of The Company’s Technology
How has the company’s technology evolved since launching? Khalsa noted:
“We’re always evolving technology to meet the customers’ needs. At first, we were simply doing on-chain identity. But then we were concerned about its privacy. So we started using Zero-Knowledge Proofs (ZKPs). Then we had to build better self-custody, hence the oblivious pseudorandom function (OPRF). We have fancy tech because sometimes new technology can meet unmet needs.”
Significant Milestones
What have been some of the company’s most significant milestones? Khalsa cited:
“Reaching our first million users, reaching our first dollar of revenue and becoming an overall profitable company. Acquiring Passport was an incredible recent milestone for the team (December 16th, 2024).”
Revenue
When asking Khalsa about the company’s revenue details, he revealed:
“We have business models we are happy with, with no expected later fee switches; we just want to bring digital rights to the world with our suite of products by scaling as much as possible! User growth is our north star and we can make revenue as it happens without worrying too much about squeezing every satoshi out of our potential revenue streams.”
Total Addressable Market
What total addressable market (TAM) size is the company pursuing? Khalsa assessed:
“The world. Everyone should have a human key because having a Human wallet is way better than having a bank account or a Web3 wallet. Ideally everyone has all three. Human Wallet gives the best of both worlds, and we see a future where anyone who has money keeps most of it in their Human Wallet, whether they are banked or unbanked. Websites should use Human ID for ID verification instead of storing all the data themselves, which causes countless privacy invasions and data breaches each month. These are only two examples, but governments could also use Human ID to verify identification instead of passports, SSNs or driver’s licenses.”
Differentiation From The Competition
What differentiates the company from its competition? Khalsa affirmed:
“Human.tech isn’t a single product but rather a brand. Our brand has little competition but our products have some. Typically our difference is in the rigor of trust given by cryptography and security.”
Future Company Goals
What are some of the company’s future company goals? Khalsa emphasized:
“We want to help people in developing countries without identity or banking have secure and usable identity and financial tools. We want to ensure folks without identity or banks can participate in the global economy.”
Real World Use Cases
What real-world use cases are you solving for first? Khalsa replied:
“Access to identity and access to finance.”
Average Person Using Holonym
How might an average person use your products on a daily basis? Khalsa answered:
“To send and receive (potentially cross-border) payments easily with Human Wallet. On a less frequent interval, to privately verify identity with Human ID.”
Good Solution To Privacy Problems
Why are digital IDs and zkTech a good solution to privacy problems? Khalsa concluded:
“Digital IDs are the cause of privacy issues. ZK and privacy enhancing technologies (PET) fixes these issues by preventing the possibility of excessive surveillance while enabling all the wonderful benefits of digital IDs. ZK lets you prove your identity without revealing it, so companies can’t see or store sensitive data yet they can keep all the convenience and security of digital identities.”
