Self has closed a $9 million seed round and officially launched Points, a user rewards system that builds on the company’s fast-growing adoption across the zero-knowledge identity ecosystem. The San Francisco based startup, which provides privacy preserving proof of humanity and verification infrastructure by technology leaders such as Google and Aave, completed the round earlier this year with participation from Greenfield Capital, Startup Capital Ventures x SBI Fund of SoftBank, Spearhead VC, Verda Ventures, Fireweed Ventures, Casey Neistat, and a roster of prominent Web3 industry leaders that includes Sreeram Kannan of EigenLayer, Sandeep Nailwal of Polygon, Julien Bouteloup of Curve, Jill Carlson of Espresso, and Hart Lambur of Across Protocol.
The seed financing supports Self’s efforts to expand its identity infrastructure as demand increases for sybil resistance, OFAC compliance, age verification, and other secure verification needs across both blockchain and traditional digital applications.
The company enables users to confirm their humanity or verify attributes such as age, residency, and date of birth without exposing personal information. Its identity products leverage zero-knowledge proofs and verifiable credentials, supporting onboarding through biometric passports and ID cards issued in 129 countries, as well as India’s Aadhaar system, which covers more than 1.4 billion people. These methods are combined through Self Pass, a unified, privacy-preserving identity layer. The platform also supports lighter-weight identity checks through Self Connect, which uses mobile phone numbers.
Self’s technology is already embedded across several high-profile partners. Google, Aave, and Velodrome are using the protocol to power applications ranging from sybil-resistant token distributions to sanctions screening and private age verification. The company recently completed its ZK Identity Residency, a three-week program hosted in San Francisco that brought together fifteen developers from more than seven countries to build or expand products integrating Self’s identity stack. Participants collaborated with Self engineers, mentors, and guest speakers, including Uma Roy of Succinct, Claire Kart of Aztec, and Dan Boneh of the Stanford Applied Cryptography Group.
Alongside the funding news, the company announced the launch of its Points program, designed to reward users for secure verification and ongoing activity across Self-integrated platforms. Individuals earn points by setting up a Self Pass and through continued usage across partner applications. Each confirmation of eligibility for an Aave or Velodrome pool, verification of age for a Lemonade event, or validation of unique characteristics for forthcoming Google Cloud integrations will generate additional rewards. As Self’s network of integrations expands and more forms of identity documents become supported, users will gain new opportunities to earn points.
Self continues to position itself as a foundational identity layer for a secure and privacy-preserving internet. The Self app is available now on iOS and Google Play.
KEY QUOTES
“Self was born out of the need for secure, privacy-preserving humanity and identity verification, and the growing adoption of our infrastructure validates that ZK-powered solutions are the answer.”
“We’re proud that our mission resonates with the best companies in the industry, and appreciative of their support in scaling Self to power the future of the internet. I am excited to work with the many builders that are already integrating and developing cool features and products with Self.”
Eric Nakagawa, CEO and Co-Founder of Self
