Over two years ago, Sam Altman, co-founder of OpenAI, launched Worldcoin, a blockchain project known for its signature metal sphere used to scan eyeballs.
The platform has recently been rebranded as ‘World Network’ and offers users digital passports – verified via the iris scans – to help online services distinguish people from bots in an AI-driven internet.
Now a group of crypto veterans, including the co-founders of decentralized finance juggernaut Lido, are preparing to launch ‘Y’, a blockchain identity platform aimed directly at competing with World Network.
CoinDesk has obtained an internal planning document for the new project. A person close to Cyber Fund, the venture capital firm led by Lido co-founders Konstantin Lomashuk and Vasiliy Shapovalov, confirmed that the document is genuine. It outlines a vision for a new blockchain-based identity platform that leapfrogs the world’s controversial eyeball scanning Orb.
Cyberfonds declined to comment. Ekram Ahmed, head of marketing and communications for the blockchain infrastructure project Celestia, told CoinDesk that he would also be joining Y as an advisor. The upcoming project is not otherwise connected to Celestia, Ahmed said.
The document, titled ‘Y vs. WorldCoin’, details how Y plans to play off World Network’s controversies — from privacy concerns, to accusations of exploitative user recruitment practices, to a general phobia of the project’s metal iris scanning sphere — as it goes to trial. users.
Instead of biometric data, Y will look at the traces people leave behind while using the internet to verify that they are human. According to the Y planning document, this method addresses privacy risks and minimizes fraud – in stark contrast to World’s reliance on iris scans.
Long-term vision
Over time, the creators of Y apparently plan to build a “Crypto SuperApp that will allow users to privately build and earn their digital identities.” The vision isn’t far off from that of World Network, whose product suite includes an identity-focused blockchain, crypto wallet and app ecosystem.
The Y document provides few details about the implementation, focusing instead on how Y will be marketed as a “direct competitor to WorldCoin” – a strategy explicitly designed to “attract maximum attention.”
Like World, Y will ostensibly help internet users identify themselves as human, which is expected to become increasingly important as AI tools and AI-generated content fool outdated identity solutions.
The main difference between the two platforms is the way they authenticate users.
While World assigns users “World IDs” using biometrics – those creepy iris scans – Y “collects data from users’ existing social media and blockchain activities, and also uses the Ethereum Attestation Service” to authenticate users. The Ethereum Attestation Service is a set of tools that people can use to formally “attest” the accuracy of certain data, which can be useful for applications such as user authentication.
According to the authors of the planning document reviewed by CoinDesk, Y’s authentication processes are designed to address some of WorldCoin’s shortcomings, such as “eliminating risks associated with biometric data breaches and minimizing opportunities for fraud.”
Y’s ‘social graph-based’ approach also aims to provide a more ‘nuanced numerical score’ to determine a user’s ‘personality’ compared to World’s Orb, which provides a simple binary reading on whether a person is or is not human.
Casting shadow
According to the planning document reviewed by CoinDesk, Y’s marketing will focus on the “controversial aspects” of World Network.
The main controversies surrounding the project were its reliance on biometric data. World claims it securely encrypts iris scans, but as the authors of the Y document note, the service has nevertheless “raised serious privacy concerns, resulting in bans in countries such as Spain and Kenya.”
The world has also seen the proliferation of black markets, where users can buy and sell scans to create fake accounts. Furthermore, the reliance on centralized hardware and connections to OpenAI has raised concerns among some decentralization-oriented crypto natives.
If Y plans to compete head-on with World, it will have to make up a lot of ground in terms of user numbers. World launched in 2023 and has since onboarded more than 15 million users, according to figures released by the project last month. Seven million of these users are reportedly authenticated by World’s Orb, while the rest opt for a lower-level World ID that doesn’t require an eye scan.
Lido is the largest decentralized finance app on Ethereum, with over $26 billion in “staked” deposits from investors who “stake” ETH on the platform to increase Ethereum security.
In addition to leveraging their influence among crypto netizens to promote Y, Lido’s founders will likely leverage World’s connections with OpenAI in their bid to attract users.
“With Sam Altman, co-founder of both WorldCoin and OpenAI, we have a real possibility that WorldCoin will follow the same path as OpenAI,” the Y document states, noting that “OpenAI started as an open-source, non- profit project. , but later became a closed-source, for-profit company.”
It’s unclear how – or if – Y will leverage its ties to Lido or any of Cyber Fund’s other portfolio companies, including blockchain validator company P2P.org and Ethereum layer-2 network Nil.