Sam Altman, co-founder and CEO of OpenAI, introduced the idea of Worldcoin in 2019.
Worldcoin, the financial and digital identity network developed by OpenAI co-founder Sam Altman together with software engineer Alex Blania, has become a reality.
The cryptocurrency officially launched on Monday, July 24 using the Ethereum-based Optimism layer two (L2) blockchain. His launch It has aroused various opinions and criticism in the crypto community.
What is Worldcoin?
Basically, Worldcoin is a protocol and cryptocurrency that seeks to serve as a universal basic income using Proof of Humanity, with the goal of distribute value to people around the world in a more fair and equitable way.
Its creators presented this idea in 2019 as a decentralized system for verifying human identity. In this way, people can receive the WLD cryptocurrency for the simple fact of being human. However, Worldcoin needs to verify that users are real people, so they must carry out a biometric verification process.
How Does It Work?
The recently launched Worldcoin app scans people's irises to check their humanity.
Users must download this app, which functions as an Ethereum wallet, on their smartphones and complete the biometric scan with specialized and highly sophisticated hardware called Orb. This process must be done in person by staring into the Orb's camera until the app generates a QR code containing a public key. When the scan is performed, it is verified that it is a real person and that said person has not previously registered in the protocol.
Then, upon completion of this process, the Orb signs a message approving a specialized hash of the user's iris scan and generates the person's global ID. Worldcoin does not store the user's full iris scan but rather the hash to verify the identity and uniqueness of each human.
Privacy and data security risks
Altman and Blania ensure that user data is protected by encryption at Worldcoin. However, the collection of users' personal data and their privacy and security are the main concerns that the crypto community has about this type of projects.
Vitalik Buterin, creator of Ethereum, published a extensive article On the privacy and security risks of user data, Buterin said that there is inevitably the possibility of privacy leaks, which can undermine people’s ability to anonymously browse the internet due to the current centralization of the project. Buterin also said that one of the biggest current limitations of Worldcoin is accessibility, as global IDs of people cannot be reliably created until orbs exist anywhere in the world, such that any human can easily access one of these devices.
Despite the current risks and limitations, the creator of Ethereum also highlighted that projects with the vision of Worldocoin are necessary to mitigate the risks posed by Artificial Intelligence (AI) for some people, who may be displaced from their jobs by this innovation.
Likewise, the creator of Ethereum credited Worldcoin's commitment to decentralizing in the future and gave several recommendations to improve the protocol. Therefore, Buterin's opinion about this new project was quite objective. But others like John Deaton, founder of Crypto Law and Edward Snowden, a privacy advocate, have not been as objective as Buterin regarding Worldcoin.
On his Twitter account, Snowden declared that the human body is not a ticket and called on users not to use their biometric data in anything that puts their privacy and security at risk. The defender of decentralization, Chris Bleck, also said that people should stay away from these retinal scanners and avoid exchanging their data for a few dollars.
WLD, more than $200 million in capitalization
The price of Worldcoin (WLD) has increased by over 23% at the time of writing. According to data from CoinMarketCap, the price of this cryptocurrency reached $3,3 per unit on Monday, accumulating more than $300 million in capitalization.
However, after the frenzy of its launch, WLD is trading at $2,07 per token and maintains a market capitalization of $218 million.
Source: CoinMarketCap
Other universal basic income tokens, such as Universal Basic Income (UBI), have seen a rise of more than 1.000% in the last hours, after the launch of WLD.
Continue reading: Artificial Intelligence evokes Satoshi Nakamoto, creator of Bitcoin
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