[cypherpundit]

Following the link in the article to the white paper "The Social Smart Contract" there is a detailed explanation of the entire project (paper.democracy.earth) - reading this, I think the answer to "what do they want to do with a blockchain and why" becomes more clear - the project is about building a digital governance platform i.e. tokenize democracy, which enables new forms of digital voter representation and participation. This article is focused on the evolution of the project's token architecture i.e. the how, vs. the what/why.

Regarding the meaning of 'formalizing humans on the blockchain" - I think the point here is, social media and the nation-states (driver's licenses, passports) are the centralized entities that control formal identity - this project is layout out an approach to decentralize the ability for a person to claim a digital ID, which is a keystone challenge to be met for digital governance to not be overrun with bots and sybils like current social media platforms are.

Also if you research the co-founder, he is a college drop out game developer and founder of a political party in Argentina - pretty far from an MBA type.