Polygon ID becomes Billions, raises $30 million to further its commitment to trusted digital identity

Author: Zen, PANews

Earlier this month, Billions, a universal human-computer interaction network, announced the completion of a total financing of US$30 million, led by Polygon. Other investors include well-known institutions in the fields of encryption and AI infrastructure such as Polychain, Coinbase Ventures, LibertyCity Ventures and BITKRAFT Ventures.

Shortly after the announcement, CapitalLaunchpad, Kaito's Web3 crowdfunding platform, announced plans to launch Billions Network on August 6th. According to Kaito's real-time monitoring data, Billions accounts for 8.03% of recent on-chain activity, ranking first on its rankings. Born out of Polygon ID, Billions has made significant strides in the decentralized identity space and has already achieved some significant successes.

The team and products are both "born out" of Polygon

The $30 million raised in its initial funding round is not only due to the trend-setting nature of digital identity authentication, but also reflects the historical roots and years of technological development of the Billions Network project team. Billions was formerly known as Privado ID, which in turn was formerly known as Polygon ID. It changed its name after independence from Polygon Labs in June 2024 and continues to focus on digital identity and reputation solutions for on-chain data.

Therefore, Billions' core team has an inseparable relationship with Polygon, with many employees having worked there before. Co-founder David Z is also a co-founder of Polygon, having served as Polygon's CTO and project leader for Polygon ID and Polygon zkEVM. He is also the project leader for the Iden3 protocol, a decentralized, zero-knowledge proof (ZKP) identity management framework based on Ethereum.

Billions' co-founder, Evin McMullen, is also a longtime digital identity expert. She founded the decentralized identity management platform Disco.xyz and previously served as a project lead at Consensys. In September 2024, Privado ID merged with Disco.xyz to accelerate the creation and adoption of a unified, cross-chain digital identity infrastructure that connects Web2 and Web3 ecosystems. Evin joined the team as Chief Strategy Officer, focusing on the business side of the business.

After Privado ID became independent, Polygon co-founder Antoni Martin and Polygon zkEVM core developer Jordi Baylina served as chief operating officer and technical advisor to the team, and Polygon Labs co-founder and current Polygon Foundation CEO Sandeep Nailwal served as growth advisor.

During the transition to Billions, Martin and Baylina appear to have left the team or are no longer playing core roles. Neither has interacted with Billions recently, and their X-platform avatars no longer feature the distinctive "Billions-style" masks seen on other team members. However, Sandeep will continue to support Billions' growth.

Universal human-computer interaction network, officially claims to attract one million users within six months

In February of this year, Privado ID officially launched its new brand, Billions, which it officially called the world's first universal human-AI network. It aims to extend mobile-first, privacy-first verification methods to billions of human users and even future AI agents, and establish the underlying infrastructure for trusted interactions between real humans and artificial intelligence agents.

The most appealing and disruptive aspect of Billions' design is that it eliminates the need for specialized hardware and biometrics like fingerprints and irises; verification can be completed using only a passport and a mobile phone. The team leveraged Privado ID's established zero-knowledge proof (ZK) and verifiable credential infrastructure, allowing users to complete identity verification in tens of seconds using a live photo taken with their phone camera or a quick NFC scan of their passport. All sensitive information is encapsulated in a zero-knowledge proof format and stored on a distributed network.

Unlike previous "proving human identity" solutions, which were designed only for humans, Billions extends this concept to AI agents for the first time: not only can human users generate, share, and revoke their own identity credentials, but AI systems can also verify the authenticity of their training models, operational behaviors, and data sources within the Billions network. This creates a closed loop of trust between humans and machines in scenarios such as automated customer service, content generation, and risk control audits. This effectively identifies trustworthy humans and avoids security risks such as AI deepfakes, bots, and scams. The network provides a unified API and multi-platform SDKs (covering React, Vue, Android, and iOS) to help developers quickly integrate identity verification into existing applications.

In June of this year, Billions launched its first mobile app, boasting that it had already attracted over one million users during the pre-registration phase. After completing verification within the app, users receive a reusable Verifiable Credential, enabling them to quickly authenticate their identity across all compatible apps with a "one-time login, multi-device access" approach. Furthermore, users can earn Power Points through verification, friend invitations, and other actions, which can be used to unlock future features and exclusive rewards.

In addition to individual applications, Billions has also developed a B2B2C business model: basic verification services are billed on a per-use basis, while advanced banking-grade/biometric verification options are negotiated by businesses. Alliance nodes within the network earn stable revenue through a fee-sharing mechanism, incentivizing ecosystem partners to participate in maintenance and governance. Early on, Billions has partnered with projects such as Aurora, Avalanche, Camp, Chaincode, Clique, Intract, Lagrange, Linea, Polygon, Qacc/Giveth, SingularityNET, and Zeeze to jointly promote the application of privacy-first identity within the decentralized ecosystem.

Balancing uniqueness and anonymity in decentralized identity

In the early days, most global identity verification solutions relied on centralized servers to store sensitive user data or on biometric hardware, posing data leakage risks and hindering global adoption. Six years ago, the Billions team pioneered the open-source zero-knowledge proof (ZK) framework, including the Circom language and SnarkJS library, laying the technical foundation for decentralized identity. According to an official announcement, Circom, the most widely used zero-knowledge proof library, powers over 9,000 projects, including Worldcoin, TikTok, Galxe, Scroll, and Aptos.

After continuous refinement during the Polygon ID and Privado ID phases, this ZK identity protocol has gradually evolved into today's Billions Network - a global identity verification system optimized for mobile devices, requiring no biometric hardware, and using passports and mobile phones as verification credentials.

The Profiles mechanism, a core product of Billions, aims to address the paradox of "uniqueness and anonymity" posed by Vitalik Buterin in his paper on digital identity. Billions hashes each application's randomly generated profileNonce with the user's primary identifier (genesis_identifier) to create a unique decentralized identifier (DID), thereby achieving decentralized, globally independent multiple identities.

Because nonce is completely random and locally generated, no server or issuer can track the same user across different applications, inherently preventing cross-context user profile splicing and surveillance. At the same time, this design does not prevent users from recovering their true identity through multi-party joint decryption when necessary, achieving accountable anonymity.

To balance decentralization and compliance requirements, the Billions Network has also introduced a Context-Based Unique Identifier (CBUID) framework, allowing the unique identifier in each application context to be derived from any type of "uniqueness proof credential" while being unlinkable and unidentifiable by default. This way, whether it's passport-based verification or biometric verification, which may be expanded in the future, Billions can use the same cryptographic process to ensure the isolation of verification results in different scenarios, while also providing optional compliance credential types for various supervisory audits.

In terms of user experience, the Billions.Network mobile app is now available on iOS and Android platforms, presenting end users with a minimalist passport + camera or passport + NFC process, while all complex ZK proof generation, DID management and credential packaging are securely completed on the client.

Through this end-to-end local key management, Billions not only avoids the risk of centralized database leaks, but also gives users absolute control over their identity data - they can choose to generate a new Profile DID in any compatible service at any time, or quickly rotate keys when they suspect a key leak to maintain their own security.

Extensive ecological layout, covering governments, institutions and crypto projects

Following the launch of Billions Network, the project team partnered with SingularityNET in March of this year to build a decentralized AI Agent Trust Registry. This collaboration aims to issue verifiable credentials to each intelligent agent, ensuring traceability and interoperability in the emerging inter-agent economy. This collaboration provides a transparent link between AI systems and their creators, enabling users to quickly identify and trust the underlying entities, thereby avoiding role impersonation and unclear accountability in multi-agent collaborative scenarios.

In July of this year, Billions Network became the "Official Identity and Credibility Partner" of the AI security platform Sentient, providing privacy-first, composable authentication capabilities for Sentient's model registration and operation. By integrating Billions' native zero-knowledge proof (Circom) and accountable anonymity (MPC) technologies into Sentient's audit process, Sentient can verify the credibility of training sources, behavior trajectories, and output results without exposing users or model training data, significantly improving the efficiency and accuracy of AI security monitoring and threat detection. Notably, Polygon co-founder Sandeep Nailwal is a co-founder and core contributor to Sentient.

In addition, Billions (or Privado ID) has also adopted Billions' decentralized identity authentication system in multiple joint proof-of-concepts (PoCs) with Deutsche Bank and HSBC, demonstrating its scalability and reliability.

According to VentureBeat, Billions Network is also collaborating with the Indian government to integrate Aadhaar, the national identity system, into its platform. Leveraging Privado ID's years of technical expertise, Billions provides Aadhaar users with a "verifiable credential" digital identity service, ensuring their passport and phone number verifications are securely and efficiently transferred across a decentralized network.

However, Billions Network, which involves digital identity, privacy, AI and cryptocurrency technologies and aims at globalization, will inevitably face regulatory pressure due to its cross-border data flow and compliance design.

On August 6, the WeChat official account of China's Ministry of State Security allegedly named Worldcoin, saying that a foreign company was using the issuance of cryptocurrency tokens as a gimmick to scan and collect user iris information worldwide and transfer the data source, posing a threat to personal information security and even national security.

Although Billions Network has abandoned biometric identification technologies such as fingerprints and irises, its reliability in data security remains a matter of debate for regulators. In a truly globalized implementation, it will still face challenges in multinational regulation, data sovereignty, and security audits.