Humanity

Proof of Humanity initially asked a narrow question: is this wallet controlled by one unique human? Palm prints, later joined by infrared vein scans, supplied the physical signal. The project now calls the broader system Proof of Trust and adds credentials for age, residence, education, employment and reputation.

That expansion changes the risk. A boolean uniqueness result reveals little; a portfolio of reusable credentials can describe a life. The user's consent scope, issuer and verifier matter as much as the cryptography.

The technical paper says raw images never leave the capture device. It describes irreversible feature extraction, encrypted signatures, split keys, IPFS and proofs that disclose only a requested claim. The privacy policy speaks more broadly: Human Institute may collect palmprint and vein images through hardware, use data for an affiliate's AI model, disclose it to providers and transfer or store biometric data on servers.

The policy keeps personal information through the relationship and five years after it ends. It says the blockchain receives only a wallet's humanity-status indication. These statements can coexist only under narrower product flows or definitions that the public documents do not map clearly, so this biography treats them as an unresolved conflict.

The distinction is operational rather than semantic. A verifier may learn only a yes-or-no proof while the enrollment service still processes account details, a biometric template or an image under its legal terms. Users need both the cryptographic disclosure boundary and the operator's data lifecycle.

The white paper labels the HP Core Platform the sole Phase 1 issuer of unique-human credentials. zkProofer nodes check presentations without raw metadata, while future accredited Identity Validators are supposed to issue domain credentials after audits, governance activation and decentralization thresholds.

Some thresholds in that roadmap are still placeholders, written as X validators and Y% concentration. A plan for distributed issuance is not proof that the current issuer or sequencer is permissionless.

H launched on 2025-06-25 with 10 billion units divided among contributors, investors, reserves, the Foundation, ecosystem, verification rewards and community incentives. The first Fairdrop let recipients claim with gas or lock for 90 days for a 25% bonus; that offer is a dated campaign, not a perpetual yield rate.

The economic paper requires 100,000 H for an Identity Validator and divides verification fees into four 25% buckets. Delegators and node operators must act and accept contract, validator and demand risk. A passive wallet does not perform an identity check.

Humanity Reserve Limited is the issuer; Humanity Foundation is the parent and steward; Human Institute Limited is developer, service operator and privacy-policy controller. The Ethereum H contract is described as a Transparent Upgradeable Proxy whose owner contract restricts mint and burn operations.

The MiCA paper itself pulls in two directions: it advertises governance proposals yet denies holders an enforceable governance entitlement. It is clear on the negative rights—no equity, profit share, interest or redemption. Current proxy ownership, upgrade and sequencer keys, provider list and Phase 2 validator set remain unresolved.