rarimo

Rarimo is a protocol focused on decentralized digital identity, operating within the Web3 and blockchain technology sector. Founded in 2021, the company, with its service provider Rarilabs, aims to address interoperability and liquidity challenges across blockchain-based identity systems. A key contributor to Rarimo is Lasha Antadze, a co-founder of Rarilabs. Antadze has an extensive background in the blockchain industry, including co-founding the decentralized auction platform Shelf Network and leading early government blockchain initiatives in Ukraine related to anti-corruption and e-identity. His work at the intersection of identity and Web3 informs Rarimo's direction.

The core of Rarimo's offering is a permissionless Zero-Knowledge (ZK) Registry, which functions as a ZK Rollup on Ethereum. This infrastructure is designed to be a censorship-resistant backbone for managing identities, social graphs, and interactions without relying on centralized parties. The protocol enables developers to build privacy-preserving applications where users can verify facts about themselves—such as age or citizenship—without revealing underlying personal data. This is achieved through client-side proving and ZK-wrapping of existing proof-of-personhood methods, like biometric passports. The system leverages a Cosmos-based blockchain for data storage and decentralized oracles to transmit messages across different chains.

Rarimo's technology has seen real-world application, notably in tools for anonymous voting and pre-election polls in countries like Russia, Iran, and Georgia, demonstrating its capacity to function even under adverse conditions. The company also offers the RariMe wallet, a self-custody solution for users to privately store identity data and generate ZK proofs. By establishing a decentralized and user-owned identity model, Rarimo aims to make hacks and censorship more difficult. The protocol is built to support a variety of use cases, from airdrops and DeFi reputation systems to private social graphs.

Financially, Rarimo has attracted significant attention from key figures in the blockchain space. In November 2024, the project secured $2.5 million in a "Vision Round" exclusively for founders, with investors including Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin and founders from Celestia, Aztec, and Gnosis. This funding is intended to support the launch of Rarimo as a ZK roll-up on Ethereum in the first quarter of 2025. Prior to this, Rarilabs, the entity developing the protocol, raised $10 million in a Series A round in 2022, which valued the firm at $100 million.

Keywords: decentralized identity, zero-knowledge proofs, ZK Rollup, blockchain protocol, Web3 identity, proof-of-personhood, self-sovereign identity, cross-chain messaging, RariMe wallet, Lasha Antadze, verifiable credentials, privacy-preserving applications, on-chain registry, digital identity verification, crypto identity, censorship-resistant, biometric passport verification, anonymous voting, ZK Passport, Rarilabs