Six Things To Know About Worldcoin

In July, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman launched another venture, Worldcoin.
Since its launch, the Worldcoin project has attracted millions of individuals who have signed up for what aims to revolutionize the global economy in exchange for almost $60.
However, the project has also attracted controversy due to regulatory scrutiny by multiple countries, a security vulnerability, and more.
Read on to learn six interesting facts about Worldcoin.

After founding the project in 2019, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman finally launched Worldcoin last month. Described as a cryptocurrency project, Worldcoin is touted as a means to universal basic income, i.e., a guaranteed set income for those who sign up, regardless of their other incomes, and create a novel global financial network.

Worldcoin’s other purpose is to usher in netizens’ “proof of personhood.” Backed by Berlin and San Francisco-based Tools for Humanity, Worldcoin enables users to verify themselves as individuals as opposed to artificial intelligence (AI) bots, tools, or algorithms flourishing on the internet.

Worldcoin notes, “‘Proof of personhood’ is one of the core ideas behind Worldcoin, and refers to establishing an individual is both human and unique. Once established, it gives the individual the ability to assert they are a real person and different from another real person, without having to reveal their real-world identity.”

Here’s how it works:

Individuals sign up to digitally identify themselves and get their iris scanned through a special device called Orb.
This generates an IrisCode anonymized and saved on Worldcoin’s decentralized blockchain.
Worldcoin proceeds to assign a WorldID (for a digital identity network) against the IrisCode while deleting the user’s irises images.
Download World App, a crypto wallet, through the WorldID to carry out gas-free transactions. Logging in through the phone number is also permitted, though that will entail some transaction fee.

To sweeten the process, Worldcoin has been offering one free Worldcoin (WLD) to individuals who create their WorldID. New users were also awarded 25 extra coins (~$59) after Worldcoin was listed on exchanges. Individuals across the world have been queuing up to get their irises scanned.

Does it sound dystopian enough? Well, it certainly does to cybersecurity, privacy, and financial regulators. Here are six things to know about Worldcoin.

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Six Things To Know About Worldcoin

1. Worldcoin statistics

According to the Worldcoin website, it has:

Over 2,202,900 users
369 active Orbs in the last 30 days
2,000 Orbs manufactured
18,696,714 WLD claimed by users

Worldcoin had 400,000 new users signing up per week in mid-July. The number of users signing up weekly rose to 504,999 in the past seven days. Further, here’s a statistic that confirms that Worldcoin is a hit with users: World ID sign-ups doubled from one million to two million between January and July 2023, which is less than half the time it took to reach the first million (May 2021 to January 2022).

In the days following the Worldcoin launch, World App downloads hit record highs around the world. pic.twitter.com/K4iV6llPfROpens a new window

2. Worldcoin Orb

The Orb is a shiny new piece of open-source hardware developed by Tools for Humanity for biometric imaging. The development of the Orb took three years of R&D efforts. It borrows design elements from the Earth. For instance, the Orb’s spherical shape represents Earth, its 23.5° represents the same degree at which the Earth is tilted relative to its orbital plane around the sun, and its 2 mm thick clear shell represents the atmosphere.

The custom-made device is built with a narrow field-of-view (~5°) camera that uses a near-infrared spectrum for high-resolution iris image capturing compared to current iris recognition standards.

Worldcoin Orb Components

Source: Worldcoin

It also consists of a telephoto lens and 2D gimbal mirror system, a global shutter camera sensor, and an optical filter with the entire mechanism controlled by several neural networks.

“The wide-angle camera captures the scene, and a neural network predicts the location of both eyes. Through geometrical inference, the field of view of the telephoto camera is steered to the location of an eye to capture a high-resolution image of the iris, which is further processed by the Orb into an iris code,” Worldcoin explained.

3. Worldcoin operations are suspended in Kenya

Last week, Kenya became one of the first countries that suspended Worldcoin from signing up people. On Wednesday, August 2, 2023, Kenya’s Ministry of the Interior issued a decree of suspension over the “authenticity and legality” of the data being harvested from its citizens.

Joint statement on the WORLDCOIN by Cabinet Secretary for the @InteriorKEOpens a new window

Kenya was one of the bigger markets for Worldcoin, where the company had set up more than a dozen Orbs. “TFH has paused World ID verifications in Kenya as we continue to work with local regulators to address their questions. We apologize to everyone in Kenya for the delay,” said Worldcoin co-founder Alex Blania. “World ID is built for privacy. We look forward to resuming operations while continuing global rollout.”

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4. European regulators are also probing Worldcoin

At least four data protection and privacy regulators are investigating Worldcoin. This includes Kenya. Like Kenya’s government, France’s Commission nationale de l’informatique et des libertés (CNIL) shed aspersions on the legality of Worldcoin’s data collection practices and called it “questionable,” according to Reuters.

Late in July, the U.K’s Information Commissioner’s Officer said they’d make inquiries into Worldcoin. Meanwhile, Michael Will, president of Germany’s Bavarian State Office for Data Protection Supervision, told Reuters that they have been probing Worldcoin since November 2022 because they need to process “sensitive data at a very large scale.”

In April 2022, investigative reporter Eileen Guo and freelancer Adi Renaldi also investigated Worldcoin. They noted for MIT Technology Review:

“Our investigation revealed wide gaps between Worldcoin’s public messaging, which focused on protecting privacy, and what users experienced. We found that the company’s representatives used deceptive marketing practices, collected more personal data than it acknowledged, and failed to obtain meaningful informed consent. These practices may violate the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR) — a likelihood that the company’s own data consent policy acknowledged and asked users to accept — as well as local laws.”

5. Worldcoin had a security vulnerability

On August 3, blockchain technology security and analysis company CeriK disclosed that it discovered a security vulnerability in Worldcoin in May this year. CertiK explained that the flaw could allow an attacker to bypass the vetting process, take over the Orb, and operate it independently without meeting the required criteria.

CertiK confirmed the Worldcoin bug has now been fixed.

4/ CertiK has since verified and confirmed that the fix mitigated the threat.

Details of the finding and and how the vulnerability was mitigated will be released at some point in future.

CertiK is not associated with @worldcoinOpens a new window

6. Worldcoin financials

Andreessen Horowitz backs Worldcoin. The company raised $25 million from the American venture capital firm as its Series A funding in October 2021. The company’s initial coin offering in March 2022 pumped an additional $100 million, taking its valuation to $3 billion.

Meanwhile, Tools for Humanity received a Series C funding of $115 million from Blockchain Capital with participation from a16z, Bain Capital Crypto, and Distributed Global in May 2023.

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