Author: Golden Finance reporter Jessy

Recently, Allen, who had hired black people in Kenya to do Worldcoin KYC and then resold the accounts to domestic users, returned to China. The products that users found on Xianyu that were sold on behalf of Worldcoin were originally from third parties like Allen in Africa.

But now this business is not easy to do. Worldcoin is officially launched, the currency price is transparent, and there is no gray area. In addition, due to the recent political instability in Kenya, he suspended the KYC business and returned to China.

This business lasted for more than three months. At the most, one promotion point that could do iris verification could earn 20,000 yuan a day. But the most profitable days only lasted for two weeks. That was in May, when Worldcoin was the hottest in China. At that time, the growth of new local users exceeded common sense, and the operator soon discovered the trick.

The following is Allen's statement:

This business became difficult to do later. Before I returned to China, one of our employees was arrested by the local police and was released only after paying nearly 250 yuan (the local minimum wage is about 900 yuan per month). The police arrested him on charges similar to "disturbing public order" in China.

What we did was to do KYC on behalf of others, and we did it for about three months. I have a full-time job in Kenya, so this business is my part-time job. This business is not difficult. I found the local operators’ promotion points, and the local employees I found took the hired migrant workers to verify the iris KYC on behalf of others. At first, the salary for these migrant workers was $1. Later, as more teams did third-party KYC verification and fierce competition, their salary increased to $3.

99% of this is driven by Chinese people. The competition is still fierce. Later, when the local Chinese saw that there was money to be made, they all started to do this. On the one hand, the wages of migrant workers were rising, and on the other hand, the head wages of local employees were also rising. In the early days, the cost of opening an account was about US$6 to US$7, and later it rose to US$9 or US$12.

The later increase in costs mainly came from spending money on store staff. They would definitely find it strange that we always took several people to scan and then took several more people to scan, so we had to give them some tips to let me continue.

Worldcoin was most popular in China in early June. At that time, we would find about a hundred people to verify at each operating point every day, but this did not last long. After more than a week, the local operators found something wrong. Worldcoin's push model is that one operator manages a large area. A country is divided into five or six large areas, and each large area will have a dozen or twenty stores. About every two or three stores is monopolized by a Chinese third party like me. The regional operators found that the data of some stores was much higher than that of other stores. Once they checked, they knew where the trick was. In order to rectify this "gray industry", the verification business in Kenya was temporarily scheduled for one week. I estimate that there are about a dozen Chinese teams doing this. So there are thousands of fake users a day.

The general public in Kenya has limited knowledge of Web3, and Worldcoin’s promotion in Kenya is not good. Before doing this business, I once passed by a verification point where you can scan your iris. That point is similar to the kind of sheds that are set up for community activities in domestic communities. I didn’t realize what they were doing at the time. It was only after I went home and saw someone posting related content on Twitter that I realized it was a Worldcoin promotion point.

If we, the third party, don't find people to register, the actual number of registrations for a local store is about ten per day. This data is what I observed: about one real user can be seen on-site every hour to verify the registration. The main reasons for the small number of real users are as follows: First, the local infrastructure is very poor, and the mobile phones used by local people are not like the smart phones we use in China. The operation of Web3 applications requires high mobile phones and network speeds. Second, the locals have no knowledge of Web3. For example, the migrant workers we hired will not accept U settlement remuneration. We give them local banknotes.

It seems that Kenya, including most parts of Africa, is not a suitable place for Web3 application promotion. I have also helped Debox promote it locally before. They contacted Chinese people from various places to be their ambassadors, but the effect was average. I live in the local area and basically haven't seen other Web3 projects being promoted on a large scale. The locals are more cautious, and if your project becomes big, the local government will also want to share a piece of the pie.

What we do must consider the input-output ratio and the trend. Worldcoin should have started to promote in Africa in October last year, but the project was not popular at that time. You couldn't make money at that time. It was not 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 and June.

If you do the math, when the cost is $6, one account is sold for $40, and one push point has 100 people, that's 20,000 yuan. We hired a general manager at the time, who led five teams, and these five teams went to various points every day, and one point could run 80 to 100 accounts.

In the early stage, the project owner also acquiesced to our behavior of finding someone to do KYC on our behalf. After all, there is user growth and good data. In the early stage of Web3 projects, it is still for investors. Only with data can we raise money. But in the later stage, the project owner must distance himself from this behavior and no longer allow so many fake users. In fact, this node released the news that the project will be launched at the end of June. In these African countries including Kenya, the data rose too strangely. Moreover, Worldcoin itself emphasizes a real KYC, and each person has only one iris.

There is a saying on the Internet that our behavior and the promotion of Worldcoin in Africa are the new colonialism of Web3. I think people who say this are "foolish". One or two dollars is just the money for a few meals for the locals.

What Worldcoin does is to give money to people in third world countries. I think from this perspective, this project is great. But if the project wants to go far, there is still a lot to do.

I work in Africa and have observed the local Web3 ecosystem. I think a lightweight wallet is a more suitable Web3 project for promotion here. Lightweight wallets can adapt to the local infrastructure level, and wallets may meet the needs of local people. For some African countries, their local currency exchange rates are very unstable, and holding a certain amount of mainstream virtual currency can resist risks. This wallet can cooperate with the government to promote it, and then give local users a certain amount of rebates, which should be effective.