Sam Altman, the guy behind the company behind ChatGPT, also helped start a project called Worldcoin. The purpose of Worldcoin is to support Universal Basic Income (UBI), which is the concept of giving money to all people on a regular basis. Maybe it’s obvious A.I. will replace most jobs and without jobs, even soul-crushing bullshit ones, there would be chaos. Or maybe, even though some people would work less, they would also have a better chance to practice that, much promised pursuit of happiness in healthier and more productive ways.

UBI requires that each person get paid only once, but linking one account to one human is something Ethereum can’t do by default. The network lives in its own universe with no natural link to the outside world. But once you solve this “Proof of Humanity” issue, then you know people can’t double dip on UBI. You know the money is going to one person and not ten bots.

Worldcoin’s approach to Proof of Humanity is to use shiny metal orbs to scan human eyeballs because your eye, specifically your iris, is more unique than your fingerprint. Your eye is a reliable, and hard to fake, sign of your identity. Your data is kept private by a type of cryptography called zero-knowledge proofs that lets you prove who you are but keeps everything else secret.

The next part is where cryptocurrencies (numbers/ points/ tokens created out of thin air with guaranteed limitations thanks to math) come in. The Worldcoin project pays people with the worldcoin (WLD) cryptocurrency. This coin is sent to everyone who has been verified as human by the metal orbs. The price fluctuates and the amount is not very high, but it is global by default so nearly anyone can receive it. The only exceptions at time of writing are people who can’t get physically close enough to an orb to get scanned, and U.S. residents who are protected from receiving UBI by U.S. regulations.

Crypto is full of spectacular scams and failures. But crypto does not have a monopoly on failed money schemes. Nearly every man-made type of money – whether issued on paper or metal – has blown up with enough time. Our current money system has really only been around since the 1970s. What really scares people is crypto gives nearly everyone the same power as the kings, emperors, presidents, and company men of the past. And unlike these men of the past, this technology forces you to keep your promises.

Like UBI, a free-flowing multiverse of currencies changes the game. We have already seen most of these new moneys fail, but a few have succeeded and more will succeed in the future. It will keep getting easier to switch between and use them. And we would eventually settle on a few numbers most people agree one so price tags are easy to read. What we don’t know is how things would change if instead of having one big money faucet at the top, we had many faucets flooding the ground below. With all sorts of entities, big and small, local and global, adding more and more to this swirl of scarcity, it would get chaotic, but in times when chaos appears to be the norm, of all the things to hold on to, why keep government money sacred?

Money can be thought of as debts, as scarcity, as a way to compare and keep track of different things. Its origin and true purpose are up for debate, but in modern times, all money is tied to the state, which ultimately enforces rules by violence. The exception is cryptocurrencies. For the first time, in a very long time, we have found a way to sever the link between money and the state. Even if you hate the scams and the stupidity and all the bros, this fact cannot be debated. You don’t have to support the existing options. New money can be created and what gives it value is belief among a group, a community. But whatever you do, please remove the thought that because the dollar has been almighty recently, it is destined to be holy forever.

If governments want to stay relevant and useful to the public, they will have to reckon with this new reality. A core piece of the state’s value proposition is slipping away. In the same ways that the internet, then social media, and now A.I. cannot be ignored for how it is altering human interaction, we cannot believe a new form of money goes away because you want it to.

If governments, especially local governments, are not completely broken and are capable of change, there is still a good case to be made for how they can stay relevant and influential in this turbulent world. For example, governments are really good at identifying humans. Unlike Worldcoin, governments don’t need to scan eyeballs as the starting requirement. Birth certificates, passports, driver’s licenses – and their non-U.S. equivalents – are old school ink and paper methods that are trusted by most the population. Democracies need a registry of unique humans to run legitimate elections. And all governments need to know who to collect taxes from. If you live in an environment with high-quality forms of identification, then it is possible and fairly simple to bring the benefits of the blockchain to the masses because the Proof of Humanity problem has already been solved.

Blockchains are built on the assumption that one piece of information is kept secret: the private key. Private keys take the form of a long string of numbers and letters that look something like this: 8da4ef21b864d2cc526dbdb2a120bd2874c36c9d0a1fb7f8c63d7f7a8b41de8f

Private keys can be thought of as the ultimate password on a blockchain. They let users control their accounts, allowing them to move assets and interact with programs and other users on the network. Private keys are also the source of public addresses, which are like mailboxes that let users receive tokens, NFTs, and UBI. One private key can control many public addresses on Ethereum.

Governments can fulfill a role they are uniquely qualified for: identifying humans and providing them with private keys.

Private keys must be kept safe, and obviously private, and there should be a way to get a new private key regardless of income level and technical knowledge. If you can get a driver’s license, you should be able to get a private key and corresponding public address. It may even be a good idea to have a basic test, similar to a written driving test, before getting a government-issued private key so people are equipped with at least some understanding of digital money and best practices.

Ethereum is like a giant, open box of Legos. Because the platform is neutral and permissionless, developers can come from anywhere, willing to invest precious time and energy knowing that their creations can be copied and built upon, but not corrupted. Code is constantly being created, used, re-used, and battle-tested in a live system. These building blocks are free for anyone to investigate, audit, and copy-and-paste, including you, your local government, and your book club.

It is messy, but rugged and secure pieces have already been created and thoroughly tested with more being created every day. If we started a new set of Legos, it is likely that few would use it, and it is almost guaranteed to be much more fragile than what already exists in the public sphere. A closed-off system could never imitate an ecosystem, which becomes stronger and more robust as more people join, contribute, and test it. Even hacks are productive because every vulnerability discovered and fixed means one less loophole to exploit in the future.

This is all meant to give more people, more options. Right now, users must be sophisticated enough to navigate an increasingly complex landscape of applications, protocols, networks, chains, layer 2s, etc. They not only must decide who to trust, what to use, and how to use it, but also where to even begin. A trusted first step is missing. As we increasingly move our lives online, a public option with no profit motive for how we build our digital identities and interact with digital objects and assets will become more of an obvious basic necessity.

Disclaimers

Experimenting with money can have unintended consequences, but there are three ways to keep us from going too far off the rails:

• 1. Protect individual privacy

• 2. Make the system transparent

• 3/ Use a Layer 2

Privacy

At the level of the user or individual, privacy must be preserved. As private keys are linked to people’s identities, financial histories, and control their funds, the responsible management of private keys, and general protection of privacy, is the most important responsibility of organizations managing private keys.

Transparency

Transparency is not for the purpose of surveillance over citizens, but accountability over the system itself. Who has power and who leads can change drastically. No matter who is in charge or what their agenda is, transparency keeps the powerful auditable and accountable. The public should always be able to tell what is going on and this is especially important when money is involved.

Privacy is for the weak. Transparency is for the powerful. Anyone in the world should be able to look at the code and be able to tell how it works. If you can’t read code, trusted engineers can examine it and report back. A.I. systems make it increasingly easy to copy-and-paste code and ask for a translation in any language. The A.I. has no incentive to lie. And a truly transparent system has an incentive not to cheat because it will be caught.

Transparency can also mean more efficiency. Over time, bureaucracies tend to get more complex and difficult for people outside the system to navigate and reason about. The levers and control valves get rusty from neglect or simply become outdated. Starting on a new foundation means a clean slate for the entire system, and if transparency is built-in, it becomes possible for everyone to follow along with how the system changes over time. It’s easier to fix things when we can clearly see what is happening.

Layer 2

Worldcoin uses Layer 2 technology. What is a Layer 2? It’s a more customizable blockchain that is connected to a bigger, more secure base layer. It inherits the security properties of the Ethereum Layer 1. The existing, battle-tested, and composable Layer 1 code – the Legos – can also be re-used. Layer 2s can be made faster and cheaper for the user. Fees could be subsidized or abstracted away. Privacy preserving features could be added as modular pieces.

Whereas Layer 1 is accessible to anyone with an internet connection by default, a Layer 2 can be tweaked to become more permissioned with more control over who and what can come in or out. Unwanted users or programs can be blacklisted. Only high quality, approved programs could be allowed into the system. The control valve could be loosened or tightened depending on how the public wants to balance safety and opportunity – access and protection.