The Self team was excited to be in Cannes last week for EthCC, where team members shared presentations on the latest protocol updates, joined panels to discuss the ZK and identity landscape with fellow ecosystem leaders, onboarded new users at the booth, and more. 

The conference kicked off Day 1 with Self’s WAGMI booth, where the team met partners in person, shared insights on how projects can leverage Self’s identity-preserving solutions, and helped new users onboard with their passports and, for the first time, biometric EU ID cards. 

Self co-founder and CEO Eric Nakagawa joined Olas’ Agents Unleashed side event, convening at the Hotel Barrière Le Majestic Cannes with gigabrains to discuss the rapid developments at the intersection of AI and crypto. Speaking on the “Potential of DeFAI and How to Get Real World Users” panel, Eric dove into the current and future impact of bots on the DeFi ecosystem and highlighted Self’s ability to prove personhood as the need for humanity verification increases. 

The next day, Eric also spoke at Taiko’s Based Rollup Summit, where he and Gink Chen (CMO, Zerobase), Shiv Sankar (CEO, Boundless Foundation), Victor Sizaret (Ecosystem Manager, StarkWare), and moderator Brian McGleenon (Head of Global News, BeinCrypto) joined the “Race to Real-Time: How to Ensure ZK Proofs Keep Up” panel.

On the panel, Eric reflected on the evolution of real-world applications as technology like ZK has matured, going from seemingly improbable edge case to an industry standard that is capturing the attention of mainstream companies. 

Back at Le Palais des Festivals, Self co-founder Marek Olszewski presented “Self Protocol: Prove-moi if You Can” on the EthCC main stage. He first introduced the audience to Self, explaining how “Self is the first production-ready ZK passport protocol that solves sybil resistance, proves you’re human, and even shows you're not a bad actor—without revealing your identity or needing capital.”

After walking through Self’s core infrastructure and how the protocol leverages zero-knowledge technology (“Who likes giving their data to third parties so they can get hacked later?”), Marek highlighted the two core developments we announced that day: expanded support for biometric EU ID cards and boosted rewards for verified Velodrome users. 

Meanwhile, ecosystem founder David Dao stopped by the Self booth to share how his community listening platform, DeepGov, is leveraging Self to verify personhood, citizenship, and more. Watch the special edition Builder Spotlight to learn more about DeepGov’s pilot in Bhutan.

Presentations continued with Eric’s talk at Akindo’s Builders Showcase, where he demonstrated the potential of Self for applications on Ethereum and beyond to verify users’ personhood and unique characteristics without ever compromising their privacy or data sovereignty. 

After the conference wrapped up, hacking began at EthGlobal Cannes, where Self offered $10K in bounties for both onchain and offchain SDK integrations. Throughout the weekend, the team supported developers onsite to help them best leverage Self’s solutions for their proposed real-world applications. 

Co-founder and Head of Engineering, Rémi Colin, also presented a workshop sharing the importance of trusted identity layers for applications and demonstrated how to leverage Self’s MCP and developer tooling. 

Congratulations to our EthGlobal Cannes winners, and thank you to all of the teams that built with Self––it was a milestone week, with much more to come. 

Follow Self on X to stay tuned for future updates, announcements, and opportunities to #BuildWithSelf at upcoming hackathons and events. 

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