Sam Altman’s ambitious effort to create a blockchain-based global verification system that proves personality via an eyeball-scanning “sphere” has just come to life. On July 24, OpenAI’s CEO announced the launch of the Worldcoin protocol and WLD token – the native currency – after years of development.
Worldcoin wants to be our “digital passport” to a new world where our human identity can never be questioned or confused with an AI. Perhaps even more ambitious, Altman claims Worldcoin could eventually pave the way for an AI-funded universal basic income — all while preserving privacy.
Backed by LinkedIn’s Andreessen Horowitz, Khosla Ventures and Reid Hoffman, the startup has already raised nearly $250 million as it begins to roll out its new global initiative. Ahead of Monday’s debut, the company has already experienced a significant wave of interest, with more than two million users participating in the beta.
However, the venture has also drawn concern and criticism from many notable figures in the tech space, including Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin and Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey.
The launch has a lot of attention as they reflect on the financial opportunity, privacy issues and everything in between.
The globe”
The first step to participate in Worldcoin is to schedule a scan with the sphere. Worldcoin’s orb is a biometric authentication device that looks like it’s straight out of the 2008 AI thriller movie Eagle’s eye. The device, which is about the size of a bowling ball, is essentially a digital litmus test to prove someone is human.
Those eager to prove their humanity can visit one of the 150 orbs currently operational. However, 1,500 orbs will reportedly be available in 35 cities on five continents by the end of 2023.
After the scan, users are provided with a uniquely generated world ID – a “digital passport” stored on their mobile device that proves that the user is not an AI bot, but in fact a living, breathing human being.
Leading this initiative is Alex Blania, a former Ph.D. theoretical physics student who is now the CEO of Tools for Humanity, Worldcoin’s parent company that operates out of San Francisco and Berlin. Tools for Humanity has developed a software development kit (SDK) that allows other third-party apps to use an individual’s world ID (once generated) instead of entering other credentials such as emails and passwords.
said Blania Fortune that he hopes to have two billion users by the end of 2023, with Worldcoin’s token launch driving more signups in new markets.
Worldcoin’s native token, WLD, witnessed a surge during Monday’s launch, with the token’s price rising from an initial $0.15 to a remarkable high of $5.29 on Binance. It ended up working out to about $2.49. However, Worldcoin does not launch its token directly on exchanges such as Coinbase or UniSwap, but instead sends it directly to users.
Advantages of Worldcoin
As digital identity is perhaps the most valuable asset today, the increasing use of AI in the everyday workforce has forced us to look for ways to protect ourselves from the high potential for confusion when an AI is involved. We are now well beyond the simple “image captcha” tasks and Woldcoin offers a unique solution. The urgent need for us to prove “personality” comes at the most critical time, with the ongoing SAG-AFTRA/WGA writers’ strike and growing concerns about job security and authorship questions continuing to unravel.
At this point, it’s getting harder to detect if a human is involved or if it’s an AI program. While the US has been relatively slow to reach a consensus on a basic, fundamental regulatory framework for ethical AI use, other countries, including the EU, have been hard at work pushing forward their proposals for their respective frameworks.
Worldcoin also offers the potential for a universal basic income – eventually. Altman says Worldcoin’s overarching goal is to eventually onboard every individual around the world into a “financial distribution model” where its native currency, WLD, could become a “central form of currency” and be distributed through “Universal Basic Income” (UBI) programs.
With AI now inevitable and now at the center of every conversation, Altman believes UBI could serve as a “buffer against widening income disparities,” with World IDs acting as a check against fraudulent claims.
However, he also admits that this Ubi-centric world is still very far away and its operation remains unclear.
“You can imagine a system like Worldcoin being used for global UBI at some point. We still have a lot of progress to make and economic growth before we can do that, but one day,” Alman shared at Worldcoin’s Seoul event. Still, he believes experiments like Worldcoin are “critical” to start now to “map the way forward.”
Concerns and cautionary tales
While some see the value of Worldcoin, others think we should be careful.
Even before its July 24 launch, some were concerned about the project’s privacy and potential for abuse. A 2022 research study published in MIT Technology Review revealed that the company’s representatives purportedly “used deceptive marketing practices” in collecting more personal data than it was willing to admit and “failed to obtain meaningful informed consent” causing possible violations of local laws and Europe’s global privacy framework GDPR.
In Worldcoin’s most recent FAQ, the company emphasizes privacy, noting that it will never share or sell personal data (including biometric data) with anyone outside the project. Furthermore, images created by the sphere are deleted once the “iris code” is created (unless the user opts for Data Custody). The company also points out that they are fully GDPR compliant.
Despite these reassurances, many on Web3 have expressed doubts about Worldcoin, including Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin. In a July 24 blog post titled “What do I think of biometric proof of personality?” He expressed deep concern about Worldcoin’s “Proof of Personhood” system directly impacting privacy, accessibility, centralization and security.
He noted that scanning a person’s iris may reveal more information than intended (at least on the user’s side). In addition, he argued that World IDs would not be easily accessible to everyone given the difficulty of currently obtaining an “orb” device. Speaking next to the sphere as a hardware device, Buterin says, “We have no way of verifying that it’s constructed correctly and has no backdoors,” teasing the possibility that malicious manufacturers could create many fake human identities.
Finally, with the possibility of a user’s smartphone being hacked, the possibility of a person being forced to hand over their iris scans poses a major security concern.
“There is no ideal form of evidence of personality,” Buterin wrote, adding that “[i]Instead, we have at least three different paradigms of approaches that all have their own unique strengths and weaknesses.”
Global identity verification
As innovative as Worldcoin may seem, it’s never a good idea to scan first and ask questions later. Anyone wanting to participate in the new protocol should do their own research before taking the plunge to get their digital passport. While certainly bold, it has yet to be proven how valuable or secure Worldcoin’s global venture actually is.
Still, Blania and his team of engineers believe Worldcoin’s protocol of iris scanning is the only universal way to create a global identity verification system, with the token serving as an incentive mechanism to recruit users.
“Think about the questions of how society will distribute access to AGI systems, its benefits, governance, how we’re going to differentiate between what’s done by humans and what’s generated by machines,” Altman said. “We don’t have answers to this yet. But if something like Worldcoin can work, I think that’s a pretty interesting new tool to have.”