In the past two days, there has been a very popular project, and everyone should have been attracted by it, namely WLD and worldcoin. They are currently listed on OK and mainstream exchanges such as Huobi and Binance. The listed price is 0.15, and currently the highest When it reached 5 US dollars, the increase was very exaggerated, and it is currently stable at around 2 US dollars. Of course, this project can also be considered a star project, the digital token "Worldcoin" co-founded by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman.
Introduction
Worldcoin is an open source protocol designed to help everyone participate in the global economy, consisting of World ID (a privacy-preserving digital identity), Worldcoin token (a token distributed to people for free around the world), and World App (a completely Self-hosted application that supports global payments, purchases and transfers). WLD is a native utility token with governance properties.
Worldcoin’s goals are ambitious. The project aims to use eye scanning technology (ORB), also called iris scanning technology, as a global identification mechanism to lower the barrier to entry and make crypto assets easily accessible to people around the world.
Its vision is to build the world's largest and fair digital identity and digital asset system and implement the "Universal Basic Income" social experiment. That is, in the future economic system in the era of artificial intelligence, people do not need to work, and only need a World App. Receive money bit by bit to meet basic needs to "lift billions of people out of poverty."
According to official information, Worldcoin has broken down its goals into three main parts: creating a global identity ID, a global asset, and a wallet that carries the identity ID and assets. These three tasks correspond to three elements: DID, Token and wallet. Specifically:
- WorldID: Orb scans iris to establish personal identity, a digital identity that focuses on protecting privacy and proving personality.
- WorldCoin: According to the official white paper, a total of 10 billion Tokens have been issued, becoming the first Token distributed to people for free globally. It is planned to be distributed to 1 billion people and is built on the OP super chain.
- WorldAPP: A wallet for payments, purchases and transfers globally, realizing people’s UBI (Universal Basic Income: Universal Basic Income)
How does Worldcoin work?
Every Worldcoin user installs an app on their phone that generates private and public keys, just like an Ethereum wallet. They then went to visit "the Orb" themselves. The user stares into the Orb's camera while showing the Orb a QR code generated by their Worldcoin application that contains their public key. Orb scans the user's eyes and uses sophisticated hardware scanning and machine learning classifiers to verify:
(1) Whether the user is a real person;
(2) The user's iris does not match the iris of any other user who has previously used the system.
If both scans pass, Orb will sign a message approving the private hash of the user's iris scan. The hashes are uploaded to a database - currently a centralized server that is intended to be replaced by a decentralized on-chain system once they determine that the hashing mechanism works. The system does not store the complete iris scan; it only stores hashes, which are used to check for uniqueness. From that point on, the user will have a "World ID".
World ID holders are able to prove that they are a unique human being by generating a ZK-SNARK to prove that they hold a private key that corresponds to a public key in the database without revealing which key they hold. So even if someone rescans your irises, they won't be able to see any actions you take.
Worldcoin is unique in that it relies on highly sophisticated biometric technology, using a piece of specialized hardware called an “Orb” to scan each user’s iris.
Their current goal is to produce large numbers of these Orbs and distribute them widely into public spaces around the world, allowing anyone to easily obtain an ID. To its credit, Worldcoin also promises to gradually achieve decentralization over time.
At present, only Hong Kong can collect iris in China, and the location is in Yau Ma Tei, Kowloon, as shown in the picture below.
What are the main issues with Worldcoin construction?
People are mainly worried about four risks:
(1) Privacy
Registry of iris scans may reveal information. At least if someone else scans your irises, they can check it against a database to see if you have a World ID. An iris scan may reveal more.
(2) Accessibility
Unless there are enough orbs easily accessible to anyone in the world, the world ID will not be reliably accessible.
(3) Centralization of power
Orb is a hardware device and we cannot verify that it is constructed correctly and does not have backdoors. Therefore, even if the software layer were perfect and completely decentralized, the Worldcoin Foundation would still have the ability to insert a backdoor into the system, allowing it to create as many fake human identities as it wants.
(4)Safety
Users' phones could be hacked, users could be forced to scan their own irises while presenting a public key belonging to someone else, and it's possible to 3D print "dummy" that can be scanned through their iris and given a world ID.
Consensus Algorithm
Proof of personhood, also known as the unique person problem, is a limited form of real-world identity that asserts that a given registered account is controlled by a real person (and one that is different from other registered accounts). real person), ideally without revealing which real person it is.
There have been some attempts to solve this problem: for example, Personality Proof, BrightID, Idena and Circles. Some of them have their own applications (usually UBI tokens), and some are used in GitcoinPassport to verify which accounts are valid in the Quad vote. Zero-knowledge technologies like Sismo add privacy to many of these solutions. Worldcoin uses the red film recognition technology mentioned earlier.
Financing
In October 2021, Worldcoin completed a $25 million Series A financing led by a16z, with a valuation of $1 billion. Other investors include Digital Currency Group, Coinbase Ventures and Multicoin, as well as FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried and LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman and other angel investors.
In May of 2023, it also received US$100 million in financing, led by Blockchain Capital, which also included the encryption team of Andreessen Horowitz, as well as Bain Capital Crypto and Distributed Global, with a valuation of 3 billion.
Token distribution
The maximum supply is 10,000,000,000 WLD, the circulation rate is 1.04%, the opening price on the first day is $0.15, and the current currency price is around 2 US dollars. And because the current circulation rate is too low, its market value is not very high. Also see his team The proportion taken is still relatively low, less than 10%. 75% is allocated to the community, which is quite conscientious.
To sum up, the founder of this current project is quite awesome. After all, he is the founder of Open AI, and the vision of the project is also very good. It helps so many people get rid of poverty, right? It is very consistent with most values, but There is a very serious problem, which is the profitability of your project. If you only let others collect the money, how can you make money? How do you use your technology or AI to generate productivity and make money? This is still a very long way at present, or it seems a bit unrealistic at present. Then how to implement this project? It’s definitely not reliable to go to Hong Kong in person. Anyway, wait, doesn’t it say that Orb points will be increased? It won’t be a big problem to pick up the quilt when it is available in China.