Humanity Protocol repositions toward enterprise AI after $36 million hack, founder says

Humanity Protocol founder Terence Kwok said the project is repositioning toward enterprise AI products, moving away from its identity-and-blockchain roots weeks after a $36 million exploit drained its treasury and collapsed the H token.

Speaking on The Block's daily show, The Starting Block, in his first interview since the June attack, Kwok said the team had spent the past six to nine months quietly rethinking its direction and that the hack accelerated a shift already underway.

How the breach unfolded

The exploit stemmed from a compromised developer laptop rather than a smart-contract flaw.

A phishing email reached several members of Kwok's team, and although no one clicked it, the attackers eventually gained access to private keys associated with a member of the Humanity Foundation.

At the time, estimates from onchain analysts gathered that wallets linked to the project were drained for more than $32 million, with the H token plunging roughly 89% as the attacker minted and dumped tokens across chains.

Kwok said the team detected the compromised keys within a short window after monitoring systems flagged unusual token movements, but mapping the full extent of the breach took several days of forensic analysis across the project's devices and network.

Recovery odds are low

On recovery, Kwok was blunt.

"I think the chance for actual fund recovery is pretty low," he said, drawing a comparison to Bybit's struggle to claw back the roughly $1.4 billion in ether taken from it last year. The intention now, he said, is to focus on rebuilding rather than clawing back what was lost. That rebuild centers on a token migration and a claims-and-compensation process run through the foundation.

A new token has been issued and airdropped to a range of addresses, including major exchanges, with conversations ongoing over snapshot times, halted deposits and withdrawals, liquidity pools, and custodian arrangements. Kwok said the process will take time because the team must trace every transaction that occurred after the hack.

He has been in contact with law enforcement across multiple jurisdictions, starting in Hong Kong, alongside separate outreach in the U.S. and by the foundation.

A pivot toward enterprise AI

The pivot itself is the sharper break. Kwok said Humanity Protocol will present itself less as a blockchain or decentralized identity project and more as a builder of products and services tied to the enterprise AI space.

"I think, in line with the hack, we're probably moving forward repositioning ourselves less as a blockchain company or less as an identity or decentralized IT project," Kwok stated.

Speaking to The Block live, he argued that identity will only grow more important in a world increasingly shaped by AI, and said the team has been experimenting with products specifically aimed at AI companies.

"There's a lot more products and services that we're going to be launching tied to the enterprise AI space," he said. "What we're actually realizing is that in this current world of AI, it's only going to be more important."

Humanity Protocol built a credentialing blockchain anchored in proof of personhood, extending to credentials for employment, assets, and credit scoring, in collaboration with MasterCard on proof of assets.

Kwok said the project has signed up around 10 million people, with a couple of million holding completed credentials.

Pushback on the rug-pull theory

Kwok pushed back against the wave of early suspicion that the project had engineered its own collapse, singling out onchain investigator ZachXBT, whose initial reaction, he said, assumed foul play.

At the same time, he credited later onchain analysis that traced a commingling of the exploiter's funds with proceeds from prior hacks, which he argued undercuts the rug-pull theory.

Kwok founded the hospitality-technology unicorn Tink Labs before entering crypto, a history that critics resurfaced after the hack. The H token traded between $0.67 and $0.85 before the exploit and fell to $0.05 to $0.13 within roughly 24 hours, according to Coingecko.