Please note that because WorldCoin is a controversial project, this is also a controversial article. Everyone looks at things from a different perspective, so their opinions are also different. Rational communication and discussion are welcome.

The listing of WorldCoin yesterday pushed its popularity to a new climax, and it was followed by mixed reviews on the project, including Vitalik personally writing a long article on biometric authentication.

I wrote an article about WorldCoin at the beginning of this year. So far, the article has been read 437K times and has received thousands of likes and reposts. It should be a relatively comprehensive and influential article. I have since communicated with everyone from the community manager to the CEO of WorldCoin, but I do not have any commercial interests in the project, so I wrote a long article and maintained communication with its team. I would like to talk about how I view this project based on this relatively comprehensive information.

There are two main opinions about WorldCoin:

1. The evil organization that collects irises, using Sam's halo and the vision of UBI to harvest SB projects around the world

2. Human socialist fighters who have taken a brave step towards fighting witches and UBI at a high cost

The main question about collecting irises is

1. Why must we use iris instead of face or fingerprint?

2. Will iris information be leaked or sold for malicious purposes?

Iris is a biometric information recognition method that has not been widely used in society. The main reason is that it is difficult to identify, has a high threshold and high cost. It took me 3 to 5 minutes to scan Orb. I had to keep my eyes open and face Orb at a special machine for a long time to complete the recognition. On the other hand, face and fingerprint do not require special equipment. Any mobile phone can complete the recognition in a few seconds. It is easy, has a low threshold and low cost. It even has a broad social foundation. If WorldCoin really wants to collect human information on a large scale for sale, or wants to cut leeks all over the world, why not use face and fingerprint? There is no need to produce expensive Orb separately and hire employees in various countries to operate this machine. Instead, everyone only needs to download an APP to do it themselves. The speed of this spread is geometrically increasing. Why not? I wonder what you think about this issue?

The answers I got from the WorldCoin team are two: first, faces and fingerprints still cannot guarantee long-term uniqueness and validity. For example, as people age, their faces change and cannot be recognized. There is also a high risk of face and fingerprints being stolen, such as when someone is asleep. Iris, on the other hand, has lifelong uniqueness and validity, and is very difficult to identify. As I said, you have to open your eyes and scan the device for a long time.

In addition, the iris, as mentioned earlier, is a biometric information recognition technology that has not yet been widely used due to its cost and threshold issues. Assuming that your face is used as an identification object (of course, a large number of apps we use in our daily lives, including the popular Miaoya Camera some time ago, have already collected our facial information), once it is leaked or used for evil, the threshold is very low, because the face is an identification technology that has been widely used, whether it is used for database collision or face swapping, the impact is very wide, and the environmental range is very large and completely uncontrollable, but the vast majority of people have probably never used their iris to do something, so if it is really leaked, it will only be in a limited single environment.

The second question is, will the iris be leaked after being collected?

I talked about this issue in my article about WorldCoin half a year ago. When collecting information, the Orb device will generate a one-way irreversible meaningless Hash code as the unique identifier of each person's iris, and then upload it, instead of directly uploading the iris information. For example, after I get your ID number, what I actually see in the background is a number like Y62fS21. This number is irreversible to your ID number, but it uniquely corresponds to your ID number. I don't know what Y62fS21 means, and it has no meaning after being leaked. Secondly, this Hash code is also generated by Orb's own algorithm and is not a universal algorithm. For example, at this time, another company also gets your ID number and uses another algorithm to generate Wf32N12.

Of course, the above premise is that Orb will not be tampered with or hacked to perform modifications or other operations that violate WorldCoin. This is an issue that needs to be considered. Therefore, even if it is very difficult for WorldCoin to do evil, there is still a risk of being used for evil.

Therefore, WorldCoin has invested a relatively huge cost to produce thousands of devices like Orb, and then shipped them to various countries, and then hired local employees or partners to promote them. This set of investment costs is huge. If you really want to do evil, you don’t have to do so. Of course, you can’t think that you won’t do evil because the cost of doing evil is high, but it is difficult to do evil when the cost of doing evil is high. This principle is also the basic reason for the existence of Bitcoin and even blockchain.

Secondly, WorldCoin has also invested a lot in the ZKML field, which I will not elaborate on. Scroll has also recognized it.

Some people compare WorldCoin with Pi. The difference between WorldCoin and Pi lies in the "self-burden and castration" mentioned just now. Such a large cost investment has limited the scope and speed of its deployment, and there is currently no CX model, so I think it is unfair to compare a project like Pi with WorldCoin.

Finally, regarding UBI, it is still to be verified. Can WorldCoin succeed? I think the probability is very low, because this is a very grand vision. It is more of a utopia of human wealth redistribution and production model innovation. WorldCoin still needs to gradually realize a certain degree of UBI through positive external income and payment transfer. Otherwise, it is just an air coin. This is a long road, no matter whether this road is paved by WorldCoin or anyone else, but I hope such a utopia can be achieved.

Finally, we welcome rational discussions. It is precisely because of the collisions of many different viewpoints that the modern world can spiral upward in the process of stumbling and falling, instead of the medieval times where people with different viewpoints were burned at the stake. Even when Elon Musk was blowing up his rocket, there were constant doubts.

Finally, let me add something about UBI. I think there are only two possible forms of UBI.

1. Transfer payments are realized with positive externality income

2. If there is no payment, it will rely on public welfare funding, otherwise it will eventually be a virtual currency. Worldcoin's UBI must still be built on these two. The white paper also roughly describes how they will make money through wallets after establishing a global unified identity and financial system, which is the first point. The second point is very interesting. The white paper says that "it will eventually move towards the path of AI-funded UBI", which leaves a lot of room for imagination...