Humanity Protocol, a zero-knowledge decentralized identity project looking to compete with Worldcoin, said it was valued at $1 billion in a seed funding round led by Kingsway Capital.

The $30 million round, which follows a $1.5 million investment from a combination of angel investors and key opinion leaders in early March, included Animoca Brands, Blockchain.com and Hashed among others, the team said in a post on Medium.

The protocol uses palm scans and a consensus mechanism it calls Proof of Humanity to uniquely verify a user's identity within a decentralized system. Worldcoin, co-founded by Sam Altman, has similar aims and went live last July using a specialized iris-scanning tool. That piqued the interest of several privacy regulators, including those of France, the U.K. and Kenya.

"Proof-of-Personhood is a powerful concept but the solutions that exist today haven't seen adoption because onboarding is invasive and high friction." founder Terence Kwok said in the post. "We're creating a decentralized identity protocol that solves verifiable uniqueness and humanity in a way that protects user privacy and self-ownership of data.”

The team at Humanity Protocol plans to use the funds for hiring and product development. A public testnet launch is planned for the second half.