As 2026 begins, we’re taking a moment to reflect on a year that redefined what digital identity can mean in a decentralized world. From our launch at ETHDenver to welcoming millions of real human users across more than 170 countries, 2025 was the year Self grew from an idea into global infrastructure — built for humans, not bots.

2025: A Year of Foundations

1. Launching at ETHDenver

We introduced Self Protocol to the world at ETHDenver, marking the official start of our mission to build the trust layer for the onchain economy. With our two core primitives, Self Pass and Self Connect, we demonstrated how identity verification could be both scalable and private, leveraging zero-knowledge proofs to keep ownership and data where they belong: with the user.

2. Expanding identity access across the globe

Our commitment to accessibility led to landmark integrations in Europe and India. By supporting Aadhaar, used by 99% of India’s adult population, and adding EU ID document scanning, Self became one of the most globally inclusive digital identity solutions in the world. Today, we support ID verification in 150+ countries, bringing verified humanity to millions of users onchain.

3. Fueling growth with a $9M seed round

In November, we announced our $9 million seed round to accelerate Self’s growth and expand zero-knowledge research. The raise also introduced Self Points, a new way to reward but have fun with verified, privacy-respecting participation across our ecosystem. It's our framework for rewarding genuine human interaction on the internet.

4. Ending 2025 with the New Year Points Booster

We closed out the year with the New Year Points Booster, a celebration of our early adopter community and a glimpse of how gamified identity verification can drive engagement, trust, and collaboration across Web3. Your enthusiasm showed us the kind of future we’re building, one where identity is an enabler.

2026: A Year of Expansion

If 2025 was the year of foundations, 2026 is the year of expansion. Our roadmap focuses on transforming Self into the default identity infrastructure that’s privacy-first, composable, and multichain by design. Privacy in identity will be a new norm, starting from Self.

1. Self App 3.0 Launch 

Self App version 3.0 will launch in Q1 with careful consideration to include even bigger communities from all around the world. Your identity verification experience will be redefined and redesigned to make verifying, proving, and using your Self ID smoother than ever, putting selective control and transparency in your hands.

2. Multichain Expansion 

We’re bringing Self beyond Ethereum and Celo to support more ecosystems natively, making verifiable humanity portable across chains. We believe the future of human identity will be even stronger with the future of onchain.

3. Selective Disclosures 

A powerful new feature allowing users to selectively reveal only what’s necessary (like age or residency) while keeping everything else completely private. Privacy will truly be the new norm with Self.

4. More Partners, More Points 

Expanding our Points Program through new collaborations, integrations, and reward structures to grow the Self ecosystem and reward verified interaction across Web3. User will be able to experience how fun, how rewarding is to own their identity, but with privacy.

Looking Ahead

The internet is being rewritten by AI, digital agents, and ever more automated identities. As we move into this new era, verifying who is real, without compromising privacy, is becoming essential infrastructure. Self was created for exactly this moment.

To everyone who’s verified their humanity, built with our protocol, or supported our mission: thank you. Your participation makes the onchain world feel human again.

Here’s to the year of Self 3.0: where privacy, verification, and composability converge.

Here’s to scaling trust for everyone, everywhere.

Happy New Year from the Self Team.