Terence Kwok - Digital Identity 3.0 - TOKEN2049 Singapore 2025

So when we think about sort of blockchain, I think since the early days of, you know, 2017, the ICO days, uh digital identity is probably one of the key things that people think of uh blockchain being able to help solve. Um I think payments is one of them. Um that's kind of being solved by stable coins now. Um, but immutable identity, uh, I think is something that people have always been talking about. Nobody's really been able to solve it.

And I think nowadays it's actually becoming more and more important. Um, because as we see when you go to any website online right now, I think, you know, one of the very first things you have to do pretty much every day is verify that you're a human. you know, whether it's by clicking on a bunch of traffic lights or solving math equations, etc., etc. So, you know, we could we in in in the traditional internet world, we call this the bot problem, right?

And bots are uh bots are bad largely because they cost a lot of money, right? It's it's internet services ad dollars that are going to waste because they're not being viewed by real human beings. And what we're seeing now, especially in AI, uh it's going to be even worse. You look at deep fake photos, you see deep fake videos. Um how do we actually differentiate what is a human being and what is not?

Um that we actually think is becoming a pressing problem. So you know, humanity protocol, uh just a just a short intro, you know, is a relatively new project company. We've been around for two years. Uh we recently launched our mainet uh launched our token. It's a layer 2 specifically vote for identity.

And what I mean by that is essentially unlike any other blockchain, we've natively built in verifiable credentials so that addresses can have IDs and credentials tied to it. And the goal for us is not to not to just be our single ecosystem but connect into other blockchains, other apps or even the traditional world so that things can be verified. And the reason why we call ourselves humanity protocol is because we actually think um the very first attribute that we want to be verifying is whether you're a human being or not. But for us, unlike other projects like Worldcoin or whatnot where it's purely about proof of personhood, for us it's actually about verifying many different pieces of data, different types of human attributes so that we can build a complete picture of a human being. Right?

So for uh as I mentioned, we we're around two years old. Uh we just launched mainet. We now have around one and a half million verified human beings uh on humanity protocol. And you know the way we're doing this is actually through many different types of credentials starting with uh a biometrics credential where people can actually scan their uh their palm print and palm veins to verify that they are a real human being. Uh we have a booth somewhere out there where people can actually experience that uh in order to onboard as a as a verified human being.

But more importantly for us, it's also about verifying other types of attributes, right? Maybe it's a reusable KYC credential or maybe it's proof of age, proof of employment, proof of education or maybe even proof of assets in your uh in your traditional bank account. So for us it's about building a decentralized identity graph so that ultimately things can be verified, things can be true and all this data uh people will have complete control over in terms of who and where they share this with and we actually think this is this is very important and this is actually a very big business. If you think about say a company like Facebook or Meta where it's trading at around two or three trillion dollars, the only thing that it really owns is all the data about us, all the data about, you know, the users on there. Um, but what's happening is they are monetizing it.

Um, and to an extent when we look at the the world of AI very soon, a lot of that data might even be false. It's pretty trivial for anybody now to create an email account, sign up for LinkedIn, sign up for Facebook, um, and just catfish, right? So, what we're trying to do is build out technology so that people can control their own data, have that data verified, and share it with whoever uh they choose to share it whenever they want. Yeah. So, we have a we have a quick video where um, you know, these devices, as I mentioned, are actually already live.

Um I think we have a booth on this floor uh where people have been lining up to uh to try out and scan and and on board. Um and the really interesting thing for us is that with uh with this type of biometrics where we're using the palm for palm prints and palm veins, it's actually fully tested. You know, Tencent's using that for payments in China. Amazon's using that for payments in uh in the US. Um, and what we're actually doing is we're also creating additional use cases so that unlike some other projects where they're just paying people money to verify themselves, we're creating utility from day one.

Right? So, um, these devices actually uh you'll soon see see them popping up in many different conferences where we're partnering with um for for example for for access control. Um there's a company recently that we uh we acquired um there's a company recently we acquired called uh MoonGate which actually powers probably 60 70 80% of the events for ticketing including uh partly token 2049. Um so soon in in a lot of the events coming out in 2026 uh crypto events you'll actually see these devices popping up at entrance so that people who have onboarded can directly access without having to go find their email find a QR code you know show their ID etc etc in order to gain access. Um beyond that I think for us humanity protocol is all about you know different types of human attributes different types of verifiable credentials.

So the palm is only one one part of it. The other stuff that we're working is actually just as interesting, including, for example, we're using CKTLS where people can actually verify different things about themselves online. Maybe it's, you know, how many hours of gameplay they've done on Steam or maybe it's, you know, their Marriott Bonvoy or Hiatt loyalty status. Um, if you guys actually go to our our our app, which is app.humanity.

org, or um and sign up for an account. There are already a number of different credentials that you can prove out and we're starting to actually work with different types of partners to allow users to monetize these credentials. Maybe it's getting rewarded for verifying and proving that you're a loyal traveler or maybe it's getting, you know, bonus points and gameplay uh dollars by verifying and proving that you're an avid gamer. Um, so for us it's it's going a lot more beyond just proving that I'm a human being, but it's also about proving and verifying many different types of attributes. Um, for example, as I mentioned, right, it might be Emirates and proving my tier, go to GitHub, prove my developer contributions, and ultimately we're going to be launching APIs and SDKs so that, you know, different sort of companies, whether it's DAPs, whether it's other blockchains or even traditional internet companies will actually have the ability to verify this.

Um, as I mentioned, you know, the the uh we we recently launched our our mainet. Uh, we launched our token. Uh, the ticker is just H. Uh it's a utility token where the idea for us is that we're creating a flywheel for there to be value acrruel with the token in the sense that you know when it comes to uh the gas fees for the blockchain or whether it's verification fees companies applications DAPs other blockchains making use of uh credentials they'll have to pay fees in uh in the token as well as you know uh rewarding identity validators who are issuing these credentials on humanity Uh they could be financial institutions, they could be universities, they could be your company saying that you know you have a proof of employment credential. Um they're all going to get rewarded uh for issuing credentials and attesting to certain facts about people and they're going to get rewarded in uh in the H token.

I think when when it comes to sort of use cases for uh proof of humanity or humanity protocol we think there's there's a lot of stuff right whether it's you know fair drops where I think one of the biggest issues people are encountering or other founders are encountering is civil you know syibles everybody generating a lot of different wallet addresses and farming them um or looking at you know we're talking to a lot of projects in the gamefy space where they want to get you know where they want to you know reward people with points tokens for customer acquisition but again it's really hard to uh to ensure that it's actually a unique person that's playing the game rather than dealing with a bunch of bots, right? Looking at Dows where we're now working with a bunch of different ecosystems to enable proof of humanity on Dows because historically um as much as we want to democratize uh blockchain uh all the Dows are actually based on proof of stake. You know, the more tokens you've staked, the more votes you have, right? So even for the humanity dow that we're going to be launching soon, it's going to be a bicamal structure where certain things are going to be voted on based on how many tokens you have staked. But then there are also other things where it's actually going to be based on one person, one vote, right?

Um and then when we sort of look at the web two space and the traditional world uh you know I mentioned earlier in terms of biometrics for access uh looking at you know we're now talking to a bunch of different online ticketing platforms as you guys know uh you know Taylor Swift concerts and different sort of things there are uh frauds fake tickets um and then scalping all of these things going on. So we actually think having credential based ticketing and proof of humanity is going to be super important. uh looking at online and offline experiences based on credentials. As I mentioned before, being able to prove that you are a you know loyal traveler or being able to prove that you're an avid gamer can bring about you know sort of a next age of uh of advertising and marketing. Um and then I think finally just to uh just to talk a little bit about MoonGate.

Um obviously you guys are already at token 2049. Um, I think for those of you who like to go to crypto conferences over the coming months, uh, and especially in 2026, you're going to start seeing a lot of events where, uh, access can be done directly just by, uh, by palm scans. So, you know, if if you guys have an opportunity, do go check out our booth where you can actually try it out, enroll yourself, and then so, you know, for for for for future events and and conferences, it'll be super easy for you guys to have access. Um, yeah. So I think you know for us the uh the for us you know we're really excited not just because you know we have a hardware product that recently launched uh and we're going to be starting to distribute 2,500 devices all over the world into conferences into events into dedicated stores to enroll enroll people but beyond that we're also working a lot on different types of partnerships so that these credentials can be used right as I mentioned whether it's a reuse usable KYC credential or maybe it's a proof of assets, proof of credit score, um, proof of employment, proof of education.

All of these things being turned into credentials on humanity protocol and then leveraging zero knowledge proofs. Different companies, different applications will have the ability to finally verify that things are true about people without having them go through a very cumbersome KYC process or going through a cumbersome, you know, let me take a screenshot of my bank statement to prove my assets and prove my address sort of process. So I think you know we're we're one of the we're one of the few projects I think in the crypto space that are really trying to solve uh an imminent problem not just for users but also for enterprises and as I mentioned I think in the age of a in the age of AI um data especially data about humans is going to be super important um is going to be super important and I actually see tremendous opportunity for what we're doing. Um that's it for me today. Thanks a lot guys.