Shardeum taps Humanode to tackle fraud and bot activity

By Vriti Gothi

Shardeum has partnered with decentralised identity project Humanode to integrate biometric-based digital identity into its ecosystem, aiming to address long-standing issues around bots, fake accounts, and low-quality participation in Web3 applications.

While blockchains excel at verifying wallets and transactions, they lack native mechanisms to distinguish real users from automated or duplicated identities. This limitation has contributed to widespread problems such as airdrop farming, governance manipulation, and incentive abuse across decentralised applications (dApps). The Shardeum–Humanode collaboration seeks to close this gap by enabling applications to verify unique human participants without exposing sensitive personal data.

At the core of the integration is Humanode’s Biomapper, a biometric verification system that operates off-chain. The solution generates cryptographic proofs that confirm a user’s uniqueness, with only privacy-preserving data shared on-chain. According to the companies, no raw biometric information is stored or transmitted via the blockchain, addressing privacy and compliance concerns that have historically constrained identity solutions in decentralised environments.

The partnership allows developers building on Shardeum to create “human-aware” smart contracts and dApps. Potential use cases include fairer airdrop distributions, bot-resistant reward systems, higher-quality community quests, and governance models designed to reflect genuine human participation rather than wallet concentration.

“For Web3 to mature, it needs to recognise people, not just wallets,” said Nischal Shetty, co-founder of Shardeum. “When humans and bots are treated the same, incentives get gamed, communities lose trust, and participation becomes superficial. By working with Humanode, we’re giving developers on Shardeum the ability to design applications around real human participation where fairness, intent, and meaningful engagement matter more than automation or scale.”

Currently, Biomapper is integrated at the application layer, allowing developers to begin experimenting with human-verified use cases immediately. Shardeum said native support for its SHM token within the identity framework is planned for a future update, which would further streamline how identity verification interacts with on-chain value flows.

The move reflects a broader industry push toward “proof-of-personhood” models as Web3 platforms look to improve governance integrity, reduce sybil attacks, and support sustainable incentive structures. As decentralised ecosystems expand beyond early adopters, the ability to reliably verify human participation—without undermining privacy has become an increasingly strategic priority.