The Open Network (TON) ecosystem developers have set aside $5 million of Toncoin tokens to incentivize users to verify their identity using state-of-the-art palm scanning technology. 

TON Society, a community of developers and contributors building out the TON ecosystem, will distribute 1 million Toncoin to users participating in the voluntary proof-of-personhood program. The project aims to enable digital identity verification for Telegram users over the next five years.

The project uses HumanCode’s technology to allow users to verify their human identity on the blockchain. The application, available on Google Play and Apple Store, lets users scan their palms on a smartphone.

According to information shared with Cointelegraph, the technology provides privacy protection and is hardware-agnostic, allowing the scanner to be used on a variety of mobile devices.

TON Foundation growth director Ekin Tuna said that supporting proof-of-personhood protocols like HumanCode is a step toward a practical reputation system with real-life use cases for TON’s ecosystem:

“A scalable, private, and decentralized identity will help to onboard the first one billion users to the Web3 ecosystem in Telegram.”

HumanCode incentives will be given to TON Society members who complete a palm scan and prove their personhood. Ton Society membership is open to the public and is granted by connecting a TON wallet to the community organization.

In March, the TON Foundation allocated 30 million TON tokens, worth around $115 million, for various community rewards to drive adoption.

The incentives are being allocated to four different areas: $38 million worth of TON will go to token mining and user incentives, $22 million for airdrops, $15 million for the League developer ecosystem, and $40 million for liquidity pool boosts.

The Telegram Ad Platform, built on the TON blockchain, officially went live in March 2024. The platform allows Telegram channel owners worldwide to receive financial rewards, exclusively selling advertising and sharing revenue with channel owners in TON.

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This is a developing story, and further information will be added as it becomes available.