After reviewing Huma's team, I finally understand why KOLs are so invested in this project...

I took a look at the core team members on LinkedIn one by one, and couldn't help but marvel at the strength of the team and their backgrounds.

➤ Co-founder - Erbil Karaman - USA
Rich entrepreneurial and management experience. Formerly product, consumer and general manager at Lyft, the second-largest ride-sharing company in the U.S., and founding product lead for major innovation projects at Facebook... He also co-holds a technology patent related to social networking services with two others... Such a polymath is indeed suitable for the field of Web3 finance + technology. Only such individuals have the willingness and capability to undertake innovative projects like Huma.

➤ Co-founder - Richard Liu - USA
A STEM expert and technology-oriented manager, formerly an engineering manager at Oracle, Google, and Facebook, and CTO of the fintech company Earnin. This is Huma on LinkedIn.

➤ Marketing Director - Ejiro Oviri - from the UAE
Has professional experience in copywriting, content management, brand planning, and brand marketing. Formerly head of brand, content, and public relations at Binance... No wonder he can embrace Kaito, leading a group of Yappers to spread the word about Huma.

➤ Business and Operations Director - Jaou Toure - USA
Originating as an investment and venture capital researcher, a strategy and business operations expert, formerly a senior project manager at McKinsey... It is estimated that Jaou Toure should handle Huma's PayFi business with ease.

➤ Community Management - Alex Goh - Malaysia
Formerly managed social media marketing at Alibaba.

➤ Product Design - Ryan Du - Canada
User experience and product expert.

➤ Country Head - Aziz Can Karakoç - Turkey
His LinkedIn introduction is as a blockchain and artificial intelligence software engineer and researcher, and his educational background is indeed related to software engineering. However, his work experience is relatively limited (from December 2021 to present), including roles as Gamefi and metaverse researcher, data science, social media management, and regional management. The country head is a senior management position responsible for the business of a specific country or region in a company, so this team member's contribution to Huma may not be technical.

➤ CBO - Patrick F. Campos - UAE
Former football coach turned strategic expert in the fintech sector. The seemingly unrelated experience is actually not weak in correlation; strategy on the football field is not simple. Having a strategic expert as Chief Business Officer is essential for Huma.

Patrick F. Campos is currently a strategic advisor at Arf.

❚ Merger of Arf and Huma
Key point: Arf is a globally regulated liquidity and settlement platform based in Switzerland, designed for licensed financial institutions in the cross-border payment sector.

Arf's investors include Circle Ventures, Stellar Development Foundation (SDF), United Overseas Bank (UOB) Venture Management, Fenbushi Capital, Signum Capital, among others.

Since 2022, #Arf has provided over $830 million in USDC loans to financial institutions.

Initially, Arf was an important partner of Huma, and by 2024, Arf had already collaborated with Huma.

The functions of Huma's products include tokenizing cross-border payment orders and using them as collateral for loans, with loans, repayments, and accounts receivable on-chain. The feasibility of these businesses is closely tied to Arf.

➤ Board Observer - Jerry X - USA
Jerry X also serves as a board observer for several projects or companies. A board observer is a role without voting rights but provides opinions. Jerry X offers advisory insights to these projects and companies based on his extensive experience in stock and cryptocurrency research and investment. Jerry X was one of the founding managers of Kepler Fi, a subsidiary of GIC (Government of Singapore Investment Corporation), responsible for management and execution. Currently a member of the Stellar ($XLM) Foundation.

❚ Support of the Stellar Foundation for Huma
#Stellar Foundation once provided support to enable Arf and Huma to realize the tokenization of real-world assets, as well as the #Circle's #USDC liquidity on-demand solution (which should provide a sufficient amount of USDC as needed).

➤ Final Thoughts
The Huma team has several notable characteristics:

First, it brings together individuals of black, yellow, and white (not ranked in any particular order) skin colors, without missing any. I don't know if this is for political correctness, but I still have to add the phrase "not ranked in any particular order."

Second, the distribution of personnel is mainly in the U.S. and UAE, with additional members from Canada, Singapore, and Malaysia. Essentially, these are the mainstream regions of Web3.

Third, almost all team members are elites from Web2 big companies, of course, there are also Web3 practitioners, but the Web3 members may be slightly fewer compared to other Web3 projects. However, some of these Web2 elites have noted their interest in Web3 areas on LinkedIn, such as DeFi, GameFi, NFTs, etc. I believe that more and more Web2 practitioners will become interested in Web3, and that in the future, there will not be a particularly clear boundary between Web2 and Web3.

Fourth, except for one relatively young team member, almost all core members of the Huma team have backgrounds and characteristics that are well-suited for their functional roles in Huma. Fully leveraging their personal advantages is beneficial for Huma's growth.

Fifth, the roles of team members include marketing, product, business, community, and business (strategy), which gives Huma a significant advantage in operations and promotion. However, technical members are relatively few, almost only one co-founder. The Bee Brother has not yet found Huma's open-source code repository. Although previous research on Huma's audit report and bug bounty program shows that it has a certain level of security, there seems to be room for improvement in technology and security.

Sixth, from the resumes and backgrounds of the team members, with the merger of Huma and Arf, its cross-border payment business on-chain and the on-chain payment derivative financial product #payfi have received support and collaboration from the Stellar Foundation and Circle (USDC), which holds imaginative potential for the business prospects.

This article was written on: May 20, 2025