PayFi new stars are at risk of P2P bursting? A brief analysis of Huma.Finance operation mechanism

Author: Wenser, Odaily Planet Daily

Recently, Huma.Finance, which focuses on the concept of "PayFi network protocol", has attracted much attention from the market due to the debate between team members and KOLs, and has even once again sparked a heated discussion on the topic of "whether academic qualifications in the field of encryption is important." Combined with its Huma 2.0 system launched on Solana Network on April 10 and the tariff trade war launched by the Trump administration, the PayFi track has risen again.

In view of this, Odaily Planet Daily will briefly introduce Huma in this article and discuss whether it has the risk of exploding from previous P2P projects.

A preliminary exploration of Huma: Solana Eco PayFi Rising Stars

It is worth mentioning that Huma is not a "native project" of the Solana ecosystem, but expanded from the Ethereum ecosystem to the Solana network in November last year.

In February 2023, Huma completed a US$8.3 million financing, led by Race Capital and Distributed Global, with ParaFi, Circle Ventures, Robot Ventures and others participating. At that time, its project was positioned as a DeFi lending agreement.

In September 2024, following the completion of the merger with cross-border payment platform Arf in April, Huma announced a $38 million financing (including $10 million equity investment and $28 million in earnings RWA), led by the first-round investor Distributed Global, with Hashkey Capital, Folius Ventures, Stellar Development Foundation and TIBAS Ventures, the venture capital arm of Turkey's largest private bank İşbank. At that time, its project was positioned as an RWA platform.

It was not until November that Huma officially positioned the project as the "first PayFi network".

 Huma official website interface

According to the official data of Huma platform, its current total transaction volume exceeds US$3.9 billion, total revenue is approximately US$3.2 million, and the platform's points Feather earns about 21.54 million; active liquid assets are approximately US$74.769 million, PayFi assets are approximately US$67.547 million; liquid assets are approximately US$7.217 million. According to Dune data, the average annualized rate of return of Huma platform is about 14.3%, even higher than the stable rate of return data of 10.5% given on the official website; the number of depositors is about 15,000.

 https://app.huma.finance/dataRoom

In addition, for the annualized revenue that users care most, according to Dune data, Huma's platform annualized revenue has gradually increased since October last year, with annualized revenue reaching US$8.536 million in March 2025. Huma 2.0, which has been online for less than a week, has now accumulated deposits of more than US$12.21 million.

 Dune Data

According to previous media information, Huma uses blockchain technology to provide payment financing (or "on-demand liquidity") for use cases such as remittances, digital asset-backed credit cards, trade financing, T+0 solutions for global payments and DePIN financing, and is committed to solving inefficiency problems in traditional financial systems. This business is mainly carried out through Arf. As of April 15, Arf's cumulative credit limit was US$1.992 billion; the cumulative repayment amount was approximately US$1.95 billion; and the capital turnover multiple was approximately 4.31 times.

According to the official institutional information, Huma is mainly used in cross-border payment financing activities. There are currently three liquidity pools, all of which are full, with a yield of more than 11.5%.

In terms of DePIN financing, Huma previously jointly launched a Roam router loan purchase plan with Roam, with a down payment of 30%. The remaining funds are provided by Huma. Users will repay the loan through subsequent airdrops and mining rewards. After the loan is settled, the equipment income belongs to the user.

In January 2025, according to third-party reports, Huma will launch HUMA tokens on Jupiter LFG Launchpad, and the voting is expected to be released in May.

 The tentative voting time is May

After introducing the project, for ordinary users, the current participation method is mainly to earn platform yield returns and Feather points rewards through deposits. If you want to maximize the latter, you can choose the Maxi mode in Huma 2.0; if you want to take into account both, you can choose the Classic mode. Invitation links are available here.

The question that more people are concerned about is whether Huma has a risk of exploding from P2P projects in the traditional Internet field?

Is there a risk of P2P bursting in Huma? Yes, but not exactly

According to the information related to the PayFi strategy memorandum file provided by Huma, Huma has actively disclosed a series of risk factors, including:

• Credit and default risk;
• PayFi product liquidity risk;
• risk of fraud and false statements;
• concentration risk;
• Warranty execution risk;
• Pre-financing execution risks;
• Regulatory and legal risks;
• Macroeconomic and market risks;
• and related risks at the company's operations, technology and blockchain levels.

 Huma official document information

In addition, Huma has also issued relevant time and amount restrictions on the user redemption process.

The official attitude towards risks is so clear and specific. Will Huma really have the risk of a burst? At present, the possibility is low. The main reasons are as follows:

• Judging from the existing business model, Huma's business model is more inclined to open up to individuals token incentive deposits without KYC/KYB on the basis of connecting corporate and institutional investors and their capital liquidity.
• From the perspective of its underlying assets and risk control mechanisms, Huma uses RWA assets (such as cash-secured bonds issued by Arf Capital) instead of high-risk P2P personal unsecured loans for business settlement. The hierarchical structure of Arf liquidity pool and the mechanism of platform covering first loss also reduce the risk of default of fund lending, and liquidity management is more flexible (lockdown period is current or 3 months or 6 months).
• From the specific functional level of the platform, Huma's PayFi network does have P2P elements because it mainly connects borrowers with investors through the blockchain network, providing financing based on future income or accounts receivable; but its focus is on payment financing and RWA tokenization, involving institutional capital and complex financial structures (such as SPV tokenization, structured financing), which is quite different from the individual-to-person model in traditional P2P lending.
• From the perspective of credit endorsement and investment institutions, Huma has received support from a series of well-known investment institutions and financial institutions including Distributed Global and Hashkey, which has also reduced the possibility of fraud in the project to a certain extent. It is worth mentioning that Huma does not conduct platform business in some countries and regions (such as China and the United States in crypto-sensitive areas).

Therefore, at this stage, Huma is more like a hybrid business model - it has certain P2P business characteristics, but it mainly relies on providing cross-border payment financing to obtain real returns. On this basis, it opens up the PayFi territory in the Solana ecosystem, and introduces partners such as Jupiter, Kamino, and RateX (the latter two are not currently open) to explore the potential of the DeFi ecosystem.

 https://app.huma.finance/PST

In the future, the focus of users should pay attention to is as follows:

• Pay attention to the health of Arf liquidity pool: https://institutional.huma.finance/
• Follow the changes in liquidity related to Huma Dune data panel: https://dune.com/huma-finance/huma-overview
• Follow Huma's official further explanation on the transparency of income sources - Huma Richard Liu: https://x.com/DrPayFi

In the short term, Huma has achieved high annualized returns and agreement revenues through short carry-forward cycles and high efficiency liquidity, and is expected to achieve the goal of US$10 billion in transactions this year with the help of Arf, a cross-border payment platform; in the long term, it still depends on whether Huma can obtain stable returns in stablecoin settlement cards, trade financing, DEPIN project financing and RWA asset tokenization.