Humanity Protocol, the blockchain-based decentralized identity (DID) project, is pivoting toward enterprise AI following the June exploit that drained $36 million from the protocol's treasury.

 

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The pivot was revealed by the protocol's founder, Terence Kwok, on The Block's daily show, "The Starting Block." According to Kwok, the team had spent the last couple of months rethinking its direction, but the hack accelerated a shift that was already underway.

 

"I think, in light of the hack, we're probably moving forward by repositioning ourselves less as a blockchain company or an identity or decentralized ID project," Kwok told Gareth Jenkinson, anchor of The Block's daily show, during the interview.

 

As part of the repositioning, Kwok said the Humanity Protocol team would focus on building products and services tied to enterprise AI. According to him, identity will only become more relevant in a world increasingly shaped by AI.

 

Kwok also pushed back against earlier claims that the hack was a rug pull orchestrated by the team. In the aftermath of the exploit, on-chain investigator ZachXBT said the incident was "possibly staged" and that he was "not buying the team's story."

 

ZachXBT claimed the team had been "crime pumping" the protocol's H token for weeks and that the exploit was the best way for active market makers to exit. However, after analyzing on-chain evidence and laundering flows, he revised his assessment, concluding that the hack was caused by a private key compromise.

 

How the Hack Happened

 

The Humanity Protocol hack was caused by a serious operational security failure. The laptop of one of the protocol foundation members was compromised. Because the laptop contained multiple Gnosis Safe multisig keys, the attacker obtained enough signatures to gain control of the protocol's Hyperlane bridge ProxyAdmin.

 

Once granted admin privileges, the attacker drained the existing H tokens from the protocol's wallets and bridges. The attacker also upgraded contracts and minted roughly 200 million additional H tokens across Ethereum and BNB Chain.

 

As a result, about $36 million worth of H tokens, the protocol's native cryptocurrency, was lost. The H token also crashed by nearly 90%, falling from about $0.67 to $0.85 to as low as $0.05 to $0.13.