African Gold Rush I Help Chinese Citizens with Worldcoin KYC, Earning up to 20,000 RMB per day

African Gold Rush I Help Chinese Citizens with Worldcoin KYC, Earning up to 20,000 RMB/day

Original Text: “I Helped Chinese People Make 20,000 RMB per Day with Worldcoin KYC in Africa”

Authors: Jessy, LianGuai

Recently, Zhao Zhao (pseudonym), who previously found black people in a certain country in East Africa to do Worldcoin KYC and then resold the accounts to domestic users, has returned to China. The products that users on Xianyu came across for getting Worldcoin KYC were all sourced from third parties like Zhao Zhao in Africa.

However, this business is not doing well now. Worldcoin has officially launched and the price of the currency is transparent, leaving no gray areas. In addition, the political situation in a certain country in East Africa has been unstable recently, so he has temporarily stopped doing KYC business and returned to China.

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This business lasted for more than three months. At its peak, at a field promotion point where iris verification could be done, he could earn 20,000 RMB per day. However, the most profitable days only lasted for two weeks, which was in May when Worldcoin was the hottest in China. At that time, the growth of new local users exceeded normal levels, and the telecom operators quickly discovered something fishy.

The following is an account from Zhao Zhao:

Later on, this business became difficult to do. Before I returned to China, one of our employees was caught by the local police and had to pay nearly 250 RMB to be released (the minimum wage in the local area is about 900 RMB per month). The police arrested people using charges similar to “disturbing public order” in China.

What we did was acting as a proxy for KYC verification, which lasted for about three months. I had a full-time job in the local area, so this business was part-time for me. The business wasn’t difficult; we just needed to find field promotion points set up by local telecom operators, and my local employees would bring hired migrant workers to perform iris KYC verification. Initially, the wages for these migrant workers were 1 USD, but later, as the competition intensified with more teams doing third-party verification KYC, their wages increased to 3 USD.

99% of this business was carried out by Chinese people behind the scenes. The competition was fierce, and when local Chinese people saw that there was money to be made, they all started doing this. On one hand, the wages of migrant workers increased, and on the other hand, the referral fees for local employees also increased. In the early days, the cost of setting up one account was about 6 to 7 USD, but later it increased to 9 to 12 USD.

The later increase in costs mainly came from giving tips to store employees. They found it strange that one person would bring several others to complete the verification, and then bring a few more people again. We had to give tips to the store employees for them to allow us to continue.

Worldcoin was the hottest in China in early June. At that time, we would find around 100 people to verify at each operational point every day. However, such days didn’t last long, only about a week or so. The local telecom operators realized that something was wrong. Worldcoin’s field promotion model involved one operator managing a large region, and one country was divided into five or six large regions, each with ten to twenty stores. Approximately every two to three stores were monopolized by a Chinese third party like me. The regional operators found that the data from some stores was much higher than others. When they investigated, they discovered where the problem was. In order to crack down on this “gray industry,” the verification business in the East African country where I was located was suspended for a week. I estimate that there were dozens of Chinese teams doing this, resulting in thousands of fake users every day.

The general public in this country has limited awareness of Web3, and Worldcoin’s promotion in my country is not well done either. Before doing this business, I passed by one of their on-site promotion points where they could scan the iris. That point was similar to a shed set up in a domestic community for community activities. At that time, I didn’t realize what they were doing, and it wasn’t until I saw related content on Twitter after returning home that I understood that it was a Worldcoin on-site promotion point.

If it weren’t for us third parties finding people to register, the actual registration volume of a local store would be about ten per day. I observed this data: approximately one real user can be seen on-site every hour to verify registration. There are several reasons for the scarcity of real users: firstly, local infrastructure is very poor, and the mobile phones they use are not like the smartphones we use in China. The operation of Web3 applications requires higher requirements for mobile phones and internet speed. Secondly, local people have little knowledge of Web3, just like the migrant workers we hire, they do not accept settlement in cryptocurrencies, and we give them local currency.

From this perspective, the East African country I am in, including most of Africa, is not a suitable place for on-site promotion of Web3 applications. Previously, I also helped Debox promote locally. They contacted Chinese people from various places to serve as ambassadors for product promotion, but the effect was only average. I have been living locally and have basically not seen any other Web3 projects being promoted on a large scale. Local people are more cautious, and if your project becomes successful, the local government will want a share of it.

When doing this, we need to consider the input-output ratio as well as the trend. Worldcoin should have started promoting in Africa in October last year, but at that time, the project did not generate much heat. It wasn’t until OpenAI became popular in China this year that this project was brought up again. This business opportunity was completely discovered by Chinese people in May or June.

Calculate this: when the cost is $6, selling an account for $40, with one on-site promotion point serving one hundred people, that can earn $20,000. At that time, we hired a general manager who led five small teams, and these five teams would go to various points every day, with each point able to handle 80 to 100 accounts.

In the early stages, the project party will also tacitly approve of our behavior of finding people to do KYC on behalf of others. After all, with user growth and good data, Web3 projects can attract investment only with data. However, in the later stages, the project party will definitely want to distance themselves from this behavior and no longer allow so many fake users. In fact, the dividing line is when the project party releases news that the project will go live at the end of June. In these African countries, the data is rising in a strange way. And Worldcoin itself emphasizes authentic KYC, where each person only has one iris.

There is a saying online that our behavior and Worldcoin’s promotion in Africa is a new form of colonialism in Web3. I think people who say such things “don’t know the true meaning of hardship”. One or two dollars is equivalent to several meals for local people.

What Worldcoin is doing is indeed giving money to people in these developing countries. I think from this perspective, this project is quite great. However, there is still a lot to be done for the project to go far.

I work in Africa and have some observations about the local Web3 ecosystem. I think a lightweight wallet would be more suitable for promotion here. Being lightweight, it can adapt to the local infrastructure level, and a wallet may meet the needs of local people. For some African countries, their local currency exchange rates are very unstable, so holding a certain amount of mainstream cryptocurrencies can hedge risks. This wallet can cooperate with the government during the promotion process and provide certain commissions to local users. The effect should be good.

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