HONG KONG, Feb. 20, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Humanity, a technology startup building the internet’s trust layer, today announced a major platform evolution: a transition from its original Proof of Humanity mechanism to Proof of Trust. Humanity’s Proof of Trust is a broader consensus framework that will enable organizations to verify and prove user information without requiring them to collect, store, or expose sensitive personal data, creating the new standard of trust on the internet in the age of AI.
The upgrade comes as artificial intelligence accelerates the creation of synthetic identities, automated engagement, and large-scale digital manipulation. As the cost of generating convincing personas and coordinated behavior decreases, traditional signals of authenticity, such as followers, engagement metrics, verification badges, are becoming increasingly unreliable. Systems built on assumptions of real, accountable participation are under strain.
Humanity initially focused on confirming users as unique, real individuals through palm biometrics and zero-knowledge proofs. Proof of Trust is an evolution of Proof of Humanity to make verifiable credentials about specific identity traits possible, allowing users to prove age, residency, education, employment, or compliance status without exposing or storing personal data across all integrated mobile and web applications. While Proof of Humanity answers the question of whether a user is real, Proof of Trust takes this a step further to prove a wide range of facts besides whether they are human or a bot.
“As AI transforms the internet from a network of people into a network of people and autonomous agents, the ability to verify who is real and which claims are credible becomes foundational infrastructure, on par with payments, cloud, and cybersecurity. Every major digital sector, including social platforms, financial services, marketplaces, gaming, education, healthcare, and governance, relies on identity, access, reputation, and compliance, yet most still operate on fragile, easily manipulated signals,” said Terence Kwok, Founder of Humanity.
“As synthetic identities and automated behavior scale, the demand for privacy-preserving, portable trust primitives will expand across billions of users and trillions of dollars in economic activity. The opportunity is the creation of a global trust standard for the AI economy.”
Humanity has also published its Trust Manifesto alongside the technical upgrade, arguing that today’s internet was never built with trust in mind, information is easy to share but difficult to verify, leaving users exposed to fraud, data breaches, and the overreach of centralized platforms.
The manifesto calls for a digital identity model built on four pillars: personal data that remains under user control, with only cryptographically proven claims shared and never raw data; a global identity layer that is non-invasive, accessible, and fair to all humans; trust infrastructure held by a decentralized network with open verification and credential issuance rather than by a central authority; and identity proofs and credentials that function across applications, primarily Web2 environments, without leaking personal data.
The release of developer APIs built exclusively for traditional applications opens the protocol to mainstream adoption. Non-blockchain applications can now integrate human verification and trust services directly into authentication flows, access controls, and credential workflows without any blockchain expertise or major overhauls to their existing systems. Use cases span social platforms seeking to verify real users, financial services streamlining KYC without storing sensitive data, authentication systems adding trust-based fraud prevention, and real-world asset ownership verification.
The company also recently acquired Moongate, an on-chain ticketing and credentialing platform. The acquisition extends Humanity’s reach into event access, loyalty programs, and real-world credential issuance, providing additional surfaces for trust-verified identity. Humanity has issued more than 8 million Human IDs to date and recently completed its mainnet deployment on Arbitrum.
About Humanity
Humanity is the trust layer of the internet. It enables users to prove any facts about themselves with portable and private credentials. Through our Proof-of-Trust network, anyone can verify identity, eligibility, or access without revealing private data. It replaces assumptions with credentials, creating a safer, more trusted digital world.
For more information, please visit https://www.humanity.org/
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