San Francisco, CA - Thursday, November 13, 2025 - Self, a leading provider of zero-knowledge (ZK) identity and proof-of-humanity infrastructure, today announces their $9M seed raise completed earlier this year. The round saw participation from Greenfield Capital, Startup Capital Ventures x SBI Fund (Softbank), Spearhead VC, Verda Ventures, Fireweed Ventures, Casey Neistat, and Web3 industry leaders, including Sreeram Kannan (EigenLayer), Sandeep Nailwal (Polygon), Julien Bouteloup (Curve), Jill Carlson (Espresso), and Hart Lambur (Across Protocol). As projects increasingly turn to Self for privacy-preserving sybil resistance, OFAC compliance, and humanity verification, this raise supports the continued development and expansion of Self. 

Best Product For Privacy-Preserving Identity Use Cases

Using zero-knowledge proofs and verifiable credentials, Self allows anyone to confirm they are a real, unique human or verify attributes like age, residency, or date of birth without revealing personal information. Self supports users onboarding via biometric passports and ID cards, issued in 129 and 35 countries, respectively, and, most recently, via Indian Aadhaar, which has over 1.4 billion registrations, combining security, scalability, and regulatory readiness into a unified identity layer via Self Pass. In addition, Self also features light-weight identity solutions based on mobile phone numbers, called Self Connect.

“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,” said Eric Nakagawa, CEO and Co-Founder of Self. “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.”

Google and Aave Among Many To Already Use Self

With marquee partnerships including Google, Velodrome, and Aave, Self unlocks a range of use cases from sybil-resistant token distributions to OFAC sanctions compliance and privacy-preserving age verification. The Self team recently concluded the ZK Identity Residency, a product and engineering-focused program bringing 15 ZK developers from over seven countries (including Mexico, Spain, Portugal, Japan, Germany) to San Francisco. Over three weeks, the cohort focused on developing and extending their projects to include Self’s ZK identity tech, with support from the Self team, mentors, and guest speakers, including Uma Roy (Succint), Claire Kart (Aztec), and Dan Boneh (Stanford Applied Cryptography Group).

As the next step in Self’s growth, simultaneously with the raise, the team today has announced a points-driven update that rewards consistent usage of the Self app. 

Rewarding Self Users & Accelerating Growth of the Platform

Users will now earn points when they securely verify their humanity and identity by setting up their Self Pass, and their continued usage across partner platforms will result in additional rewards. Each time an individual creates an attestation confirming their eligibility for an Aave or Velodrome pool, their age for a gated Lemonade event, or their unique characteristics for the forthcoming Google Cloud integrations across the AI-powered Web3 search tools, testnet faucet, and first-of-its-kind mainnet faucet, they will earn new rewards.