Written by: ChandlerZ, Foresight Information
On June ninth, in accordance to on-chain analyst Specter, wallets that had interacted with the digital identification venture Humanity have been beneath steady assault. Lots of of addresses holding H tokens have been compromised, with whole losses exceeding $31 million. Roughly $9 million has been transformed to ETH, whereas about $9.9 million stays within the type of H tokens.
Humanity founder Terence Kwok subsequently confirmed a safety incident involving the disclosure of a basis member’s non-public key. As a precaution, he suggested customers to quickly chorus from interacting with the Humanity cross-chain bridge or any liquidity swimming pools till additional safety is confirmed. The crew is working with safety consultants and trade companions to deal with the problem and can proceed to replace the group on the progress.
The price of H token plummeted from round 0.7 USDT to a low of 0.052 USDT, a drop of over 90% in 24 hours. As of press time, H was buying and selling at 0.1368301 USDT, with its market capitalization falling from $2 billion to round $35.7 million.
As of 11:00 AM on June ninth, the attackers are suspected of minting 100 million Humanity Protocol tokens H and are at the moment promoting them for BNB.
Chain detective ZachXBT tweeted that he’s skeptical of the assault Humanity suffered immediately, believing the incident could have been orchestrated by the crew or associated events. He famous the venture’s extremely concentrated token provide and the truth that all H tokens have been offered off on DEXs relatively than CEXs after the assault, suggesting that market makers (MMs) used a “hacking assault” as a pretext to facilitate large-scale exits of their positions.
A venture that has not actually “proved human nature”
Based in 2024, Humanity Protocol positions itself as a decentralized digital identification community. Its core promoting level is utilizing palmprint biometrics and zero-knowledge proofs to confirm whether or not a person is a actual particular person. The venture is constructed on Polygon CDK (zkEVM) and claims to clear up issues corresponding to Sybil assaults, pretend accounts, and AI-generated identities with out exposing private info.
This narrative attracted important capital consideration in 2024, with Humanity Protocol finishing two rounds of financing totaling $50 million. The seed spherical raised $30 million, valuing the corporate at $1 billion, with traders together with Kingsway Capital, Animoca Manufacturers, Blockchain.com, and Shima Capital. An extra $20 million spherical in January 2025, led by Pantera Capital and Bounce Crypto, raised the valuation to $1.1 billion.
The Humanity Basis additionally brings collectively many distinguished figures, led by Yat Siu, Chairman of Animoca Manufacturers, with co-founders together with Mario Nawfal, founding father of a global blockchain consulting agency, and Yeewai Chong, a senior funding professional at Morgan Stanley and Ortus Capital.
On June 25, 2025, the H token was launched by way of the Fairdrop mechanism, touted as the primary token distribution in Web3 historical past completely to verified actual customers. Nevertheless, two days after its launch, DL Information reported a leaked dialog between the founders. Within the dialog, Kwok admitted that of the 9 million Human IDs created on the community, solely about 1 million had accomplished biometric verification, that means that as many as 88% of customers have been seemingly bots.
Moreover, in accordance to customers on the X platform SCoin (@LianFang_) and AB Kuai. Dong (@_FOR AB), Humanity Protocol (H) could also be a “home venture in disguise.” The app’s code library nonetheless incorporates photos of Shenzhen entry management producer Zhangteng, elevating questions on its authenticity. Netizens declare that its social media buzz is essentially orchestrated by the venture crew’s alt accounts, elevating doubts about precise person participation.
AB Kuai.Dong said that those that have beforehand verified with Humanity must be cautious. Zhangteng Info is backed by a Shanghai-based outsourcing firm specializing in full-service identification verification outsourcing. Moreover, whistleblower SCoin claims the venture collects massive quantities of customers’ palm print info, elevating privateness and safety issues.
This was deadly for a venture whose core worth proposition was “proving humanity.” The H token plummeted by greater than 61% inside two days of its launch, falling from round $0.05 to a low of $0.018.
The founder’s earlier unicorn burned via $170 million.
Terence Kwok’s private background additionally provides a layer of danger to this venture. In 2012, on the age of 20, Terence Kwok dropped out of the College of Chicago. After receiving a $900 roaming invoice throughout a journey, he based Tink Labs, offering free smartphones (branded as Helpful) in lodge rooms for friends to use overseas as an alternative of incurring hefty roaming charges. This idea initially impressed the capital market, and Tink Labs raised $170 million from Foxconn, SoftBank, Innovation Works, and the founding father of Meitu, reaching a valuation of $1.5 billion and changing into Hong Kong’s first unicorn. At its peak, Helpful gadgets lined 82 nations and 600,000 lodge rooms worldwide.
Kwok’s aggressive growth technique shortly encountered actual obstacles. International roaming charges continued to decline, resorts have been unwilling to pay for Helpful gadgets, and the corporate started to lose cash in 2017. In accordance to the Monetary Occasions, SoftBank reduce off funding to key tasks after discovering that Tink Labs may be diverting funds from its Japanese three way partnership to different loss-making markets. In July 2019, greater than 100 workers in its European, Center Japanese, and African workplaces didn’t obtain their salaries. Laid-off workers smeared cake on the partitions and flooring once they left the Oxford workplace. On August 1, Tink Labs formally closed, and in January 2020, it entered chapter liquidation proceedings. A former human assets government instructed the FT that Kwok solely cared about “making a living,” and its $170 million funding evaporated.
Six years later, Kwok returned to the market with Humanity Protocol, as soon as once more securing a unicorn valuation from Pantera Capital and Bounce Crypto.
Non-public key administration: an outdated drawback with new prices
Primarily based on present info, this assault didn’t contain sensible contract vulnerabilities or protocol-level safety flaws. The attacker obtained a basis member’s non-public key, representing a failure of essentially the most conventional safety administration.
The safety state of affairs within the crypto trade was already extreme in 2026. In accordance to CCN statistics, within the first 4 months of 2026, DeFi hacks induced losses exceeding $1 billion, and many of the stolen funds stay unrecovered. The $286 million assault on Drift Protocol on April 1st was the biggest single incident this yr. Attackers are more and more concentrating on validators, RPC nodes, and governance techniques, relatively than simply sensible contract vulnerabilities. Nevertheless, non-public key breaches stay one of the vital devastating assault varieties as a result of they bypass all on-chain safety mechanisms and immediately acquire management of property.
For a venture that has confronted controversy over 88% of its customers being bots and whose token has plummeted by over 90% from its peak, a $31 million non-public key breach might be the ultimate blow that breaks belief. As of press time, Kwok said that the crew is working with safety consultants and trade companions to deal with the problem, however made no point out of any person compensation plan or defined why the muse members’ non-public keys weren’t protected with fundamental safeguards corresponding to multi-signature or {hardware} isolation.
