We used to be a small but very ambitious team in 2017, mostly positioning ourselves as crypto-oriented white-hat hackers. We were working with white-hat hackers worldwide and organized the event visited by Steve Wozniak. Our team visited industry conferences, negotiated partnerships with key industry players, and reached projects to deliver our cybersecurity services.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2017 was a year of crazy ICOs launches. One could easily collect tens of millions of USD during an ICO. As for that time, the HKN (former \u2014 HAI) ICO was pretty modest and raised $4 million. Looking back to last year and seeing crypto projects crushed, I\u2019m even more sure it was the right decision to be focused on the product. People were always primary for us, but we did not use this power to the fullest. It was time to build expertise and let the industry know about it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Beginning of Hacken Ecosystem Era, 2020\u20132021<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

In that period, there was a crypto boom. Both mature projects and newcomers enjoyed high popularity among investors and crypto enthusiasts worldwide. Hacken was building the community around the HAI token, enhancing its utility with the released HackenAI application and launches of the HAI membership, hVPN, and hPass applications (still, both are used by HAI holders for free).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We started organizing family-atmosphere events like Blockchainhackers and Defi Retreats and talking to the community through AMA sessions. To elevate cybersecurity in Web3, we established the Hacken Foundation, which supported the launches of OneArt, HAPI, disBalancer, and PureFi. HAI token holders could farm other cybersecurity tokens with HAI. That time was remarkable as the DeFi boom led to the token\u2019s utility revolving around farming and speculation on the token price.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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russian War and New Reality Era, 2022<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

In February 2022, the community migrated to Discord and became more mature. Then the worst forecasts came true \u2014 ruzzia invaded Ukraine, our homeland. HAI holders started selling their tokens due to fear of the possible future. Our decision to block access to our apps for russian users also added some selling pressure, but it was a fundamental thing to be made. Anyway, we had total control over the situation. A few days later, we started fighting on the cyber front by DDoSing ruzzian propaganda websites together with the disBalancer tool, Liberator. We made a product that hundreds of thousands of people use, which helps Ukrainians survive the horrors of war. Now, Liberator continues to work separately from us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019m grateful to everyone from our community who appreciated our decision and actively supported us during that time of uncertainty.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2022 was hard not only for Ukrainians but for millions of crypto users. The collapse of Luna, 3ac, and FTX has led to the evaporation of trillions of USD. Speculative tokenomics are still crushing. Teams without revenue and products used by their communities are shutting their operations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2022 was the time to think strategically. We did very well with the B2B market share increase. But what about B2C? What is the perfect community we want to build? What is the portrait of the Hacken holder in 2025 we want to see? What is on his mind? Is he bothered about another IDO, farming opportunity, or seeking airdrops? No. We want to build a different community.<\/p>\n\n\n\n