Yan: 0:00

With AI, it's increasingly easier to create fake wallets, and it's not a fake wallet, but I mean it's to have thousands of wallets for a single entity and to collect a thousand times the airdrop that you should be entitled to get, which is diluting the value that goes to real humans, to the one user participating with his or her one wallet.

Joeri: 0:24

Hello everyone and welcome to the Web3 CMO Stories podcast. My name is Joeri Bilast and I'm your podcast host, and today I'm excited because it was a long time ago, but now I have another Belgian on the show. Hi, jan, how are you?

Yan: 0:39

Hey, Joeri, I'm doing well. Yeah, I'm in Belgium. I'm still based in Belgium. I'm sorry you were based in Lisbon, but I'm still here.

Joeri: 0:48

You're still in Belgium, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm in Lisbon, in the meantime in Sintra. So, guys, if you are now wondering who is Yan, Yan Ketelers, ezcmo at Holonim, the foundation that launched humantech. Yan has more than eight years of experience working on Web3 infrastructure, leading GTM teams at PolkaStarter, fendley and Delta, part of eDoro. This is a short introduction, jan, but, as I just mentioned, you worked across different projects like the ones I mentioned, and now you're at humantech. What is actually the common threads in how you approach marketing web3?

Yan: 1:27

yeah, that's a good question. So the four projects are pretty different. I'd say I started with delta. Delta as a user applications or portfolio tracking applications, so marketing there was very much focused on on end users. Then I went to Venly is more a SaaS company, almost like a Web 2.5 or a Web 2.0 company, but offering Web3 SaaS solutions. So that was very much B2B. And then at Polkstarter we're a decentralized fundraising platform. So there I'd say it was more into the Web3 because there we worked with smart contracts and decentralization. And now at HumanTech by Holonetand it's also very much in the ethereum ecosystem. So also very much into into web3 and more the protocols. And like I would say that the constant thing across the different companies I worked for is always working with a with great products. So it's I really like when, when we're able to market a product and do a lot of product marketing versus doing a lot of, I would say, hype or meme marketing in Web3. So the constant would be that it's always been professional and solutions-driven companies that I work with.

Joeri: 2:43

Okay, well, interesting, and now at Human Tech you are tackling identity, privacy, personhood. Why do you think that, yeah, these are the most urgent frontiers right now in Web3?

Yan: 2:59

Yeah, we've seen like a huge increase in bots and symbols very much in Web3 with, let's say, fake wallets. And why have we seen that? It's because in crypto we've seen a lot of metrics or a lot of decisions or distributions based on metrics like followers, engagement, active wallets and stuff like this. We've also seen a lot of airdrops and airdrops to wallets where you were maybe as like a cluster of airdrops and airdrops to wallets where you were maybe as as like a cluster of sibyls, or bots incentivized to have multiple wallets, to to generate multiple airdrops. So now it's it's only increasing. So, with with ai, it's increasingly easier to create fake wallets. And it's not a fake wallet, but I mean it's. It's it's to have like thousands of wallets for a single entity and to collect a thousand times the airdrop that you should be entitled to get, which is diluting the value that goes to real humans, to to the one user participating with his or her one wallet. So there, and that's a huge thing with identity and and identity, if you want to prove your identity, or if you want to at least prove that you're human, or to prove of humanity or prove of personhood, tie to your wallet, then it comes a huge challenge of privacy. So how to do this, how to prove that you're a human without revealing all your information and giving all your information?

Yan: 4:19

And we've seen those issues in Web2 and in Web3. In web two, for example, governments got hacked with with their people's data online, like addresses, social numbers, phone numbers, email addresses, everything. And in web three, we've seen that as well, with kyc providers having all that data and also being hacked and also losing that data to hackers. So that's where I think it's it's very, very important to see identity and privacy together, to make sure that people can share their identity or prove things without revealing their identity to everything. And in Web3, there is a beautiful thing that Sol said and, as you know, that's the zero knowledge protocols. So we use your knowledge for that, or we issue stamps, for example, on human passport but I'll come to that later to prove someone's identity, or like a proof of residence or proof of clean hands, for example. That's not being on sanctions list. So, yeah, that's why we try to solve with human tech.

Joeri: 5:21

And we do that across different products, right, yeah, you just mentioned it. Human passport. Can you talk a bit more about that and what it is? And now, in the world of today, with AI everywhere, how do you preserve privacy, right?

Yan: 5:35

Yeah, so human passport is an accusation that we did end of last year. People probably know it better than their Gitcoin passport. So there was a spin-off from gitcoin where the golden passport became passport of xyz. So they're the the owned entity and we acquired an entity because we already work together with our technology that they use as a stem. So rzk technology for proof of residency, approved personhood, um, zk passport checks, and what passport is really good at is is having that coverage with, with end users and that that brand presence of people knowing and using passport. So we've acquired passport.

Yan: 6:20

We merged the two teams together and we merged the roadmap and a vision together and now Human Passport is one of our three, let's say, core products that we have, next to the human wallet as well, which is going to go live in a couple of months, and then the human network.

Yan: 6:36

That is basically the backend of everything. It's an AVS, an eigenlayer and semiotic and that's the network that is creating those hashes and those keys for the wallet and for passport and passport I mean most important thing are. I always like to explain the use cases of some crypto protocols or products, and for passport, I'd say the main use case is civil resistance. So what I was explaining earlier how to prove that you're a human, how to participate in airdrops, how to participate in voting, for example with with Gitcoin grants, voting with users yeah, to do, do their voting by proving one votes from one human, um, and then say the crud quadratic voting experience on Gitcoin is in support is still by passport. And those are the two main, the two main use cases for cases for passport at the moment.

Joeri: 7:28

Interesting Now. As you know, many Web3 projects focus on speculation you know or speed. Human tech seems grounded in rights and resilience, so how do you position that to both users and investors?

Yan: 7:44

Yeah, that's a difficult one sometimes. So it has in the past years, always been the same game in the Web3 and crypto space is that most projects tend to get success from hype and getting lots of followers, lots of vanity metrics, lots of engagement. And why are they doing this? It's because exchanges give a lot of attention to that and investors as well. So it's it's a it's short, almost always like short term um wave of attention that you need to to get on and and be at the right time on the right hype with the human thank you.

Yan: 8:23

We're also like in same industry I would say Web3, whereas it's still important for our investors and for the token coming up to have those metrics up. But we try to very much fight against that because one, it's in our roots that we do anti-Sybil and most of those penalty metrics are based on bots and we want those bots out of the room. And the second thing is we we're trying to really prove that we are big in a sense, or that we are an actual business doing actual revenue, by showing our actual metrics. So like, for example, how much money did we help distribute from projects to humans? How much refugees are we helping with their identity verification or with spinning up wallets.

Yan: 9:10

How many keys is the network generating? So how many active users do we have on passports? Those metrics are really the most important for us and we believe those should be also the most important ones for investors and for exchanges. Looking at projects, we're also one of the few companies I'd say in crypto. That is, that is, making what is profitable and making revenue from our services and and this is, yeah, this is what we try to to fight with, so hopefully we'll see in the coming months if you're able to do that correctly. This will be a huge challenge and not do or not jump on the big vanity platforms.

Joeri: 9:54

Yeah, absolutely. You know, I've I talked to a lot of people and a lot of projects too, and you know they want to have investors, they want to attract investors and they want to think of hype and so on. But, yeah, I love your human story. You know the values that are important for you. You have already, I think in the meantime, 2 million users. So how did you structure the go-to-market strategy for human tech to drive adoption? And then, yeah, without sacrificing those values, for human tech to drive adoption? And then, yeah, without sacrificing those values.

Yan: 10:25

Yeah. So the big luck that we have is that we were able to work with the human passport or the Gitcoin passport community, so most of the users are coming from Gitcoin passport. Now, in human tech, the idea to now funnel them into the other products and and what we do next to human passport is by doing almost like a classic points campaign, but not the points campaign where we again engage people on vanity metrics, but a points campaign where we reward people that are actually using the product. There's not going to be a referral mechanism of of, of bonzi shims, it's just like a super simple you get points for what you did with human passport in the past and you will get points for what you're doing with human passport today, and it's not going to be a huge difference in how how much points I can get versus another one. It's it's it's very, very simple points campaign.

Yan: 11:22

And then the idea there is before we launch the token, we will funnel that points campaign into a human wallet points campaign. So users will be able to discover, let's say, our other product, which is a wallet, and if they adopt that wallet, if they're a fan of the wallet, they will score points with that wallet. If not, that's also fine. So we're pretty open. We are not making it how to say, like mandatory to have the human wallet to claim points and the go-to market is also but it or structured in a big funnel where passport users will get into the human wallet and then from human wallet they'll discover human tech and then the overall solutions that we have under human tech. But now for now, it's like keeping it step by step and simple, from product to product yeah, makes sense how you explain it now for me, people that are following me.

Joeri: 12:19

They know my podcast, now my blog. For me, storytelling is a big thing that I'm doing so for for you. What role does storytelling play for you when you're marketing something? Yeah, that is maybe quite abstract as digital human rights yeah, there are two things.

Yan: 12:38

I think there is one is more our brand vision or a company vision with human tech, where we're creating a campaign which is a manifestation campaign that's manifesting digital human rights, created the covenant. We are working together with extremely bright people, from academics to researchers to artists, all sharing their vision of what it means to have human digital rights and then building all of that together and and that's that has been really strong to explain our vision and also to compare our services with, with competitors like world coin, for example, where we have the more pluralistic approach and and a very much, I'd say, web3 ethos approach to what we're building. So that's one that's that's abstracting a bit of technology, on the one hand, with a, with a, with a narrative that is like what are we solving or or why do we exist, what is our vision of a better internet and who are our partners that are battling with us? But then, on the other hand, there is still the product marketing side of things, where we also need to explain what the products do in a very simple way or as simple as possible, and for human passport, it's been simple because users have to use the passport tool to get, for example, on an airdrop place or to vote for a specific thing. So when they have to use a specific tool, they are onboarded in that tool and then you learn within the tool what the tool can do. So that's been an easy flow, but for the wallet it's a bit more complicated. The easy thing about the wallet is that everyone in Web3 understands what a wallet is, so that's already a win for us.

Yan: 14:18

But then why the human wallet? How is the human wallet different from other wallets and why should I use a human wallet? And there is a lot of brainstorming that we've done in the past. What is, how do we position? What are our USPs? And all right, our USPs for example, we are most secure wallet. But every wallet is going to say they're the most secure wallet. And if we say why we're the most secure wallet by saying we have two PC and PC technology then we just lose 95% of people in the audience because we're going to dive deeper in a very technical parlay.

Yan: 14:53

So with the wallet, I think one of the main narratives around the wallet will be that our wallet is always recoverable. Which is new in crypto for self-custody wallets that you can recover your wallet without a seed phrase. That is a new thing because you can always recover your wallet with seed phrases. But we don't believe that everyone should do self-custody and write down their seed phrase, then hide their seed phrase something somewhere in the, in a field, and there is then or whatever, or or tear it in three pieces and hide it everywhere at family places. We, we believe that this can be solved and we we do that. We solve that with our network, so the key is split across different nodes and we can bring that key together and then recover that wallet if needed.

Yan: 15:39

Yeah, but that is again like getting more technical, like how are we doing this? What is again their 2pc mpc technology to be able to do that? How is that secure and all that. So that's going to be, that's going to be a challenge to to gain trust and to explain that. So, yeah, narrative and and the whole ideation around it is going to be very much key to to be successful in onboarding users to that wallet yeah, you're already here, this podcast explaining everything I'm listening.

Joeri: 16:09

For me it's um, it sounds clear and then, and really interesting because seed faces, wallets and a bit bit scared of losing it and so on we hear so many stories. Now let's talk about the directing of capital flow to real humans instead of bots or middlemen. How does that practically look like in the next 12 months?

Yan: 16:32

Yeah. So now we're like I would say 90% of those capital flows that we help today go to real humans is from airdrops. So, for example, story Protocol doing their airdrop to their users. They don't want it to go to bots, so they collaborate with us. We do a Sybil check with our wallet list so we can do that from a CSV list that they share with us, and we have our models and algorithms that check that list and then flag the bots or symbol clusters. Or we do that live, where users can just connect their wallet. They have a score, a humanity score, if they're above 20, then they're approved as human and they can shortcut it by scanning their passport, for example, in ZK. So that's what we mainly, mainly, do.

Yan: 17:18

But then when you ask, in the next 12 months and and and there we have very interesting partnerships with, for example, ref unite, um, ref unite is a refugees organization where we have a pilot now in africa where we onboard users and for them it's it's important to again prove their personhood, to make sure that one person has one wallet and receives aid.

Yan: 17:43

So with a distribution, I don't have to explain that thing, but there's always a big funnel and there's a lot of aid that people give, for example, or sponsor, that goes lost or that gets yeah, they're lost to to, or again organizations or bots in the in the system and don't get to the to the end users. So with cryptography and with that technology of proving personhood, of making sure that we have the whole spectrum of of of, let's say, the organization of people, of refugees without identity papers, because that's a big issue as well or a big challenge as well Then we're able to control that identity in a very privacy-preserving way and to do aid distribution. So that is going to be one of the major things in the future that we'll be doing, and hopefully it will be more funds or capital flows through a distribution and to airdrops in the future you mentioned already.

Joeri: 18:43

Yeah, wallets can use a wallet for your identity proof, but there are, of course, other other ways to use wallets. Now, today, we see an evolution and for wallet shifting from technical tools to these trust anchors. So how does human wallet fit in?

Yan: 19:02

Yeah, that's interesting. At my time at Vanley, we also had a wallet, our wallet technology there, and we also were thinking how does a wallet out of the future look like? And I'm a big fan, for example, of some crypto wallets like Phantom has an awesome wallet. Rabi is a bit more technical, but like more features. That's an awesome wallet. Um, but how do we see, how do we see human wallet in the future? I think it's. It's one where you have that identity as a core of the wallet as well, like your traditional wallet, where in your wallet you have your cash money if you still use cash but also your identity documents, like your driving license, your identity card, your passport, whatever is in that wallet as well. So I think it's going to be a bit similar where we go to have your identity baked into that wallet as well, to be recovered again by proving it's you, because you prove that that wallet is tied to your identity. So if you can prove it's you, you can recover wallet. And then it's also a question of features. So lots of wallets now have like in wallet swapping, which is great, which is super convenient, but that's not something that every user is going to need. And if you add all those features to those wallets, all those different chains that you support, and you have to switch chains and you see a list of 12 chains and 8 chains you've never heard of. And you have to switch chains and you see a list of 12 chains and eight chains you've never heard of and you have to bridge before being able to use that chain. That's very complex for a big audience, but that is what another audience would, for example, need.

Yan: 20:26

So with Human Wallet, how we try to brand or position it is, instead of saying we're a wallet as a service, we say we're a wallet as a protocol. So in the protocol you we say we're a wallet as a protocol. So in the protocol you can use what features or you can decide what features you want to implement for your users. And it's a protocol because it's free. You can build with it.

Yan: 20:48

We monetize it in a different way with, for example, a gas tank where we simplify transactions and take a very small fee on every transaction through that gas tank. So it's free. You choose what you want to implement, what chain or chains and what identity protocols you want in there. So, for example, for those refugees again with the case of RefUnite, it's a very much simplified wallet where you can use stable coins or you can add your identity and where you do a two-factor authentication through SMS or email, for example. So I think that that spectrum of wallet is where we'll go to More identity baked into the wallet and then wallet as a protocol where you choose how technically and how deep you want to go with features.

Joeri: 21:32

Well, amazing. Look, I think there is a lot of potential in wallets. There are many wallets out there, but thanks for sharing all of that. Now, another thing I would like to ask you, Jan, is yeah, because you worked in several accelerator startups, DAOs what is actually your, or maybe one of the biggest marketing lessons that you have learned and that you maybe still apply every day in every context, and that you maybe still apply every day in every context?

Yan: 21:58

Yeah, I think a great one, since I worked with startups almost always in technology companies so I worked very closely with founders who are extremely intelligent extremely intelligent, sorry, and way more intelligent than I am and also way more technical on their products. So they always have to explain to me what the products do and I tend to ask a lot of questions, especially in the beginning, and it sometimes takes 10, 20, 30 questions on specific technology before I can understand it. And what I learned from that is marketing is being able to still think as the end user, which is super simple. I'm not saying anything new, but once you're too long in a specific company, you tend to also think that everyone understands what core principles are, like ZK technology. Zk we understand because we are in Web3, but we still have to explain ZK in very simple terms. So that's where I try to keep it super simple. Do the KISS principle in communications that we do, unless it's a dev rel communication to developers, then we can be more technical or it's in the docs, but websites should be very, very, very simple. Always explain things through use cases like how can this be used? What are actual use cases, even even if you don't have those cases live. Yet you can explain like you can use this for airdrops, for example, working like this. You don't have to say we did the story protocol airdrop and it worked. Like this we can say through explaining a potential case and then making sure to brief founders, because founders often go on podcasts and on stages as well, and when they explain the products, that's the best marketing but also the most tricky, because they tend to go too technical, they tend to compare their technology with other technologies and then they lose half of the audience and they talk more in the how we build things instead of the why. And yeah, we need the the why we we build things and what we are solving. I wanted to say so. That's, that's one of the big things.

Yan: 24:05

And then another thing is also with community. Community is very important. I've, I've, I'm not a huge I'm. I'll say I'm not good with community management, but I realize that community management is something very important, because that's where you create your fans that you will need. And community management isn't having 200 K followers on on Twitter and 60,000 GMs per day on your discord. It's. It's really having a core fan base, people that give feedback on your product, people that are ambassadors of your product. Rewarded or not rewarded doesn't matter that much. If you can do it without rewarding, that's better for your company treasury. But creating those fans is super important to get early product market feedback and working towards that fit. And then with that community.

Yan: 24:56

The last thing I want to say on that is don't try to onboard everyone in the community. I think one of the famous Satoshi quotes I have it in front of me because I don't know it by heart, but it's if you don't believe me or don't get it, I don't have time to try to convince you, sorry. That is really also something that you need to keep in mind. You can't explain everything 50 times to someone. If you keep it simple and those people are not onboarded, then just continue with the journey and with the people that you have onboard yeah, I love all of that and actually you know people that are following the podcast, so it's a marketing podcast.

Joeri: 25:33

But sometimes I have entrepreneurs coming to the podcast and telling their story and if they are founders, they tend to be sometimes technical right, and for me it's an interesting challenge to make them tell their their story. But, yeah, indeed, and and talking about cases and and anything, then comparing, if it's web3, you know web3 story, comparing this to web2, and so on, I think you you do that when you are on stage two, right that's a really great web2.

Yan: 25:59

It's like one of the things that I said in the beginning of my web3 journey was to family when they asked like why? Why crypto? Why blockchain? Uh, what is what is an nft? What is what is the rc20 token? And I said, like, forget all of that. I'm also not saying I'm gonna sstmp you something is I'm gonna email you something, that that's, that's the, the end thing. So the technology underlying technology doesn't matter, and that's something that we often say. But saying like the, the, or comparing it with web 2 makes them realize all right, yeah, web 2 is also very complicated, like how the internet works, and I don't have to get how the internet works to to understand that a digital work is something that is only owned by me because I can prove it's. It's tied to my wallet, for example, with nfts. So that's comparing to web2 is a really good tip indeed. Absolutely, absolutely. Yeah, we're already coming towards the end of the podcast episode, cian maso.

Joeri: 26:49

Something I would like that's comparing to Web2, is a really good tip indeed, absolutely yeah. We're already coming towards the end of the podcast episode, sian, something I would like to ask you. You know Web3, today the world goes really fast, so can we look into the future, maybe one, two, three years fast forward? What is your vision for how people will talk about identity privacy?

Yan: 27:19

and what is the role that human tech will play in that shift? Yeah, I hope we all play a big role, but some trends that are that I see definitely happening is especially with the rise of AI is hacks, impersonations. We already see it and we see it more and more often. Impersonations we already see it and we see it more and more often. We also won't be able to to to detect real footage from from ai generated footage, like videos that circulate online, although the younger audience is still able to very much understand what is real and what is fake. So that's that's hopeful, but I think that people will realize that identity, or online identity, is very, very important to keep private. Things will happen with their identity. If an AI is able to collect a lot of data, a lot of pictures, videos, voice notes and et cetera will be able to reconstruct you and use it against you. So hopefully, people will understand that before being hacked. That's often with passwords that you understand that a password is really important, because your Facebook has been hacked and someone else got your password and then you start doing two-factor authentication. So I hope that people will do stuff like two-factor authentication before being hacked. But yeah, a lot of people will be hacked before that happens. So I hope they will understand that.

Yan: 28:32

And then what is also possibly going to happen is that big tech companies will again try to be the owner of your data and identity, which is again a threat. They haven't used it in a good way in the past. They have done a lot of ads on it and, yeah, I think 10 years ago, when you asked what facebook knew about you, they they knew stuff that that were normal to to know because they were listening through through applications, and then they were yeah, they had to do or they were forced to stop doing that. So it will still happen like that. Big tech companies take benefit of those things.

Yan: 29:09

So that's why we try to kind web3e those, why is decentralized it or make sure that you are the owner of your private data and identity. So, with human tech, we hope that we are going to be the framework solving that, and lots of companies are also going to implement our, our tools. Today we're, I would say, very much a project that is setting up that framework, so we're centralized as a team, but once we will launch the token and be dependent on the network, that's completely decentralized, which is already the case, which is good. I hope that we will be able to step down in, let's say, in implementation, in convincing people to use the human tech framework, and that we will more be the ones that facilitate all that and manage grants to invest in projects using that framework. And, yeah, I hope that human tech is going to continue as a decentralized movement and that framework.

Yan: 30:09

And yeah, bit by bit by bit, we're getting there. But there is that there is a long way ahead of us well.

Joeri: 30:17

Thank you for this positive message at the end of this podcast episode, jan. Really interesting. If people want to know more about human tech or if they want to connect with you, where would you like me to send them?

Yan: 30:30

so there are a lot of places because we have lots of of applications, products, but the most easy thing is humantech. So, humantech that you go to our website, you'll see an overview of the different products, and then there is a section for builders and a section for users. As we try to keep it simple, as simple as possible, we work with a lot of video as well, which is displayed on the website, where we explain our vision. So, yeah, go to humantech and you can click through and go to our Twitter from there join Discord Telegram.

Joeri: 31:03

All is on the humantech homepage. Okay, perfect. As my listeners know, there are always show notes and there is a blog article about this podcast episode. Every link that you mentioned or that I find on Human Tech website, I will put those links there so that my listeners can easily find them. Well, jan, it was really a pleasure to have you on the show. Thank you so much.

Yan: 31:21

Thank you. Thank you for great questions and for doing this in the space. I really like what you do here.

Joeri: 31:27

Guys, what an amazing episode. I'm sure that you have people around you that will also love to listen to this episode, so be sure to share this episode with them. If you are not yet following the show, this is a really good moment to hit the subscribe button If you haven't given me a review yet. If you give me these five stars, this will help me reach an even bigger audience, and, of course, I would like to see you back next time. Take care.