What is the purpose of the world coin that features iris authentication, global airdrops, and the creator of ChatGPT?
What is the use of the world coin with iris authentication, global airdrops, and created by ChatGPT founder?Original text: “Scan the eye to exchange “World Coin” ChatGPT’s father “exploits the poor”? “
Author: Wood Mu
Translation: Wen Dao
After ChatGPT became popular worldwide, the cryptocurrency project Worldcoin founded by Sam Altman returned to the public eye. This project was born 2 years ago. At that time, OpenAI, which was iterating the GPT model, was not yet so well-known, and the CEO of the company, Sam Altman, was also among the tech giants.
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At that time, Worldcoin, which was still a pure cryptocurrency project, was born and attracted various doubts. Among them, the vision of “realizing basic income for all” sounded like giving money to the people of the earth. This kind of “pie in the sky” was once questioned for fraud because the currency was not issued for a long time.
Today, ChatGPT and OpenAI are world-renowned, and Altman’s Worldcoin has made a comeback, proposing the concept of “human identity card” in the era of artificial intelligence, and unconditionally airdropping Worldcoin tokens to the public, with the aim of offsetting the unemployment caused by artificial intelligence. This is even more magical than “realizing basic income for all”.
Under various doubts, Altman wants Worldcoin to seek another $100 million in financing, and the project has also launched the cryptocurrency wallet World App globally, is it really going to distribute “money” this time? However, receiving “money” is not unconditional. Worldcoin is being questioned for illegally collecting biological data from poor people.
Exchange your iris information for “basic income”?
After two years of being dull in the cryptocurrency market, Worldcoin, which wants to “lift billions of people out of poverty,” returned to the Web3 arena, this time with the cryptocurrency wallet “World App”.
Since the official version was launched on May 8th, World App, including the test version, has received more than 1 million downloads, and the project party Worldcoin has also issued a commemorative NFT for the launch of this wallet, with more than 60,000 holders.
The reason why this wallet has quickly caused the public to install it is largely due to the expanding concept of Worldcoin-from realizing basic income for all to offsetting the loss of employment caused by artificial intelligence. And the way to achieve it is “unconditional airdrop of tokens”.
In the world of cryptocurrency, once a “token” appears on the secondary market, it means that it can be realized as money. The phrase “unconditional airdrop” is like telling you that you want to “give you money unconditionally”, which is hard to avoid making people think of “not shearing white and not shearing”. Nowadays, the World App wallet has also arrived, and the airdrop seems to be not far away.
WorldApp requires iris scanning in order to register. Compared to common Web3 wallets, World App not only can receive, send and use fiat currency to purchase crypto assets, but also has a "World ID" function as its main feature, which claims to allow each user to have their own "human passport ID" and achieve one person, one code. As long as you authenticate to this ID and prove that you are a person instead of a robot, World App will airdrop a certain amount of Worldcoin tokens to you every month. With these tokens, you can buy daily necessities on World App.Regardless of which merchant accepts the tokens, Worldcoin "money" is not something that can be obtained unconditionally. After downloading World App, you will find that it cannot be registered as easily as other mobile applications. This is related to another feature that the app boasts—it will not leak any personal information. The implementation method is simple, because it simply does not collect your email address, phone number, ID number and other routine personal information.Not collecting means not leaking, which is indeed a good way to protect privacy from the source. But what information can users provide to register and "receive money" from the client?The solution proposed by the Worldcoin team is: submit your iris.In 2021, after the Worldcoin project was established, the first device produced was the iris biometric device Orb, which captures human eye images and converts them into unique IrisHash (a short string of digital codes), trying to ensure the uniqueness of personal ID by scanning human irises.Soon, the operators of Orb brought ball-shaped instruments to some places to promote the project. Whoever scanned their own eyes with this instrument was eligible to receive Worldcoin tokens. The project first went to underdeveloped countries and regions around the world to start "scanning", and tens of thousands of people had their eyes scanned by these Orbs.Why does Worldcoin insist on using the costly and sensitive authentication method of "iris"? Because it wants to "give money" to the public. At the beginning of its establishment in 2021, the project set a grand goal: to create a UBI (universal basic income) system supported by a decentralized network to help an economy, after creating enough profits, unconditionally distribute some of the money to citizens.
The idea of UBI is quite utopian, but Worldcoin has really put it into practice, believing that the premise of implementing UBI is to create a reliable identity authentication system to prevent "witch attacks," that is, to prevent one person from controlling multiple wallet addresses to make a profit. To achieve this, authentication methods such as mobile phone numbers and email addresses that do not have uniqueness are not feasible, and ID cards may also be falsified, while the iris on the human eye is absolutely unique, and compared with fingerprints and faces, the difficulty of counterfeiting is relatively high.
So, Orb, which scans iris all over the world, was born.
However, the iris information collected by Worldcoin belongs to personal biometric information, just like fingerprints and veins. In sovereign countries such as China and the United States, personal biometric information is protected by law.
Now, the World App, which still requires iris authentication, has arrived, and if you want to register, you still have to go find an Orb device to scan your iris. According to previous information, these devices are mainly distributed in twelve countries and regions in Africa, South America, Europe, and Asia, and are operated by twenty-five operators. In October 2021, Worldcoin claimed to have 100,000 users.
Will you give up your iris to get a token called Worldcoin? Don't worry, this token is not available yet.
Seeking another $100 million in funding amid criticism
Due to Worldcoin's failure to issue tokens, users who have had their irises scanned believe they are holding an "unredeemable IOU". Criticism has been ongoing since two years ago, with Worldcoin being accused of abusing biotechnology to invade user privacy, and later falling silent with the bear market in the cryptocurrency market.
After ChatGPT became a new favorite in the tech industry, it was suddenly discovered that Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, was one of the founders of Worldcoin, and the project is showing signs of "recovery" with this founder and the AI hot trend.
In March of this year, Worldcoin introduced a new background of artificial intelligence on the old concept of "universal basic income". The project posted on its official website that the age of artificial intelligence requires the establishment of "human identity authentication," and when artificial intelligence replaces most people's work, establishing a reliable mechanism for human proof becomes an important prerequisite for achieving universal basic income.
With the emergence of the World ID protocol and the World App, Worldcoin attempts to create a futuristic economic system using the Web3 infrastructure trio consisting of DID, Token, and Wallet, along with biometric technology. In a future age of artificial intelligence, where robots have taken on much of humanity's work, many people have become useless and cannot find jobs, but also don't need to, because they have a World App, which they can use to earn money and satisfy their basic needs. They can then look for ways to create new value.
Worldcoin has made the dream of "realizing universal basic income" come true in the future. At the end of 2021, Worldcoin announced that it would launch its mainnet in 2022 and planned to cover 1 billion users by 2023. Today, the mainnet launch of Worldcoin has been delayed until the first half of 2023, with a user base of only about 1.7 million, which is far from its target.
Even with the endorsement of Sam Altman, the project is unlikely to be considered reliable and has even been subject to criticism.
First of all, what is the basis for the value of the tokens issued to users as purchasing power? Ari Blockingul, founder of the crypto investment firm Block Tower Capital, pointed out that Worldcoin's core business model is to steal data from the world's poorest people, exploit the data in a way that exploits the poor, and monetize it. "This is a criminal act of stealing data from poor people through fraud."
Hudson Jameson, a former member of the Ethereum Foundation, questioned the fairness of Worldcoin's token distribution: 80% is provided to the public, 10% to investors, and the remaining 10% to the team. "How can this create a fair global currency? Do they have any analysis to prevent wealth disparities in certain regions?"
Regulation is also a risk that Worldcoin cannot avoid. Even the stablecoin project Libra, which once carried the vision of a "world currency" and was backed by Facebook, with over 2 billion users worldwide, ultimately failed because currency is the sovereignty of a country.
Altman is also aware of this and stated publicly at an event that in the United States, you may never need to use Worldcoin, "depending on how determined the US government is to ban cryptocurrencies." This statement reveals that Worldcoin will ultimately have to face the game with regulatory agencies in various countries.
In addition, collecting biometric information to achieve identity verification will always put Worldcoin on the edge of the legal bottom line related to personal information protection.
In March of this year, the World ID protocol launched by Worldcoin used zero-knowledge proof technology, allowing users to maintain control and anonymity over their ID data to protect user data. Otterman also said, "Personally, I would rather have the privacy I give up for using Facebook or other things than the privacy I give up for scanning the retina."
However, in reality, Worldcoin is still a commercial company, and most countries have established regulations on how commercial companies can use private data, including not being able to transfer sensitive data such as personal information abroad without authorization. It is also an important reason why the Orb device, which intends to "benefit the world," is difficult to promote in more countries.
Iris biometric device Orb is being "promoted" in some areas
Until now, Worldcoin has not publicly issued tokens. Last year, a $100 million token financing raised the estimated total supply of tokens for the project to $3 billion. However, the latest official news is that Otterman is seeking $100 million in new financing for the project.
The CEO of OpenAI is about to venture into the special field of cryptocurrency, which inevitably raises concerns that a failed experiment will affect OpenAI's reputation. As Liu Changyong, director of the Blockchain Research Center of Chongqing Technology and Business University, said, "The fields are as different as the mountains, and Sam Otterman is an authority in the AI field, but may be a cabbage in the blockchain field, and needs to pay tuition. This process may ruin the main business."
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