The Open Network (TON) ecosystem developers have set aside $5 million of Toncoin tokens to incentivize users to verify their identity using state-of-the-art palm scanning technology. 

TON Society, a community of developers and contributors building out the TON ecosystem, will distribute 1 million Toncoin to users participating in the voluntary proof-of-personhood program. The project aims to enable digital identity verification for Telegram users over the next five years.

The project uses HumanCode’s technology to allow users to verify their human identity on the blockchain. The application, available on Google Play and Apple Store, lets users scan their palms on a smartphone.

According to information shared with Cointelegraph, the technology provides privacy protection and is hardware-agnostic, allowing the scanner to be used on a variety of mobile devices.

TON Foundation growth director Ekin Tuna said that supporting proof-of-personhood protocols like HumanCode is a step toward a practical reputation system with real-life use cases for TON’s ecosystem:

“A scalable, private, and decentralized identity will help to onboard the first one billion users to the Web3 ecosystem in Telegram.”

HumanCode founder Tim Zhang tells Cointelegraph that the technology securely scans a human palm by extracting the pattern directly onto a user's smartphone device. 

“This local extraction ensures the pattern is non-reversible, meaning that even if someone were to gain unauthorized access to our server, reconstructing the palm images from the patterns would be impossible,” Zhang explains.

The founder added that the system maintains U.S. SOC2 data security and privacy certifications and implements a triple-layer privacy protection mechanism. The first step involves local extraction of the user’s unique palm pattern, preventing personal information from being transferred off the device.

The extracted feature is encrypted before being sent to HumanCode servers to secure the data during transmission. The verification process is conducted locally on a user’s device, removing the need to transfer sensitive data to external servers.

HumanCode incentives will be given to TON Society members who complete a palm scan and prove their personhood. A soulbound token is then minted as a representation of their verified digital identity before users are rewarded for their participation.

Cointelegraph also highlighted the reality of increased skepticism for proof-of-personhood technology in conversation with Zhang, given that Worldcoin has received pushback for its iris-scanning technology.

The company’s iris-scanning devices and data collection methods have been subject to investigations and regulatory scrutiny in Hong Kong, Spain and France over the past six months. 

Zhang said HumanCode’s use of robust security protocols and encryption is an important trust-bridging factor, while suggesting that users might feel less intimidated about scanning their hands instead of their eyes:

“From our experience, palm recognition technology is inherently more acceptable. For most people, scanning your palm with a smartphone camera just feels less intrusive than eye-scanning.”

Zhang also said the technology can potentially combat bots and fraudulent accounts on any social media platform by verifying the authenticity of users through unique palm patterns. This allows a platform to effectively distinguish between real users and automated bots.

In March, the TON Foundation allocated 30 million Toncoin, worth around $115 million, for various community rewards to drive adoption.

The incentives are being allocated to four different areas: $38 million worth of TON will go to token mining and user incentives, $22 million for airdrops, $15 million for the League developer ecosystem, and $40 million for liquidity pool boosts.

The Telegram Ad Platform, built on the TON blockchain, officially went live in March 2024. The platform allows Telegram channel owners worldwide to receive financial rewards, exclusively selling advertising and sharing revenue with channel owners in TON.

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