Introducing Worldcoin

A new, collectively owned global currency that will be distributed fairly to as many people as possible. (Worldcoin.org)

Crypto twitter and media was littered with skepticism (The Defiant), claims of dystopia (reddit), and some passionate criticisms (crypto twitter) following the detailed launch plans revealed by Worldcoin in October (How the Launch works, Worldcoin.org).

Creating a global scale, Proof of Personhood (Wikipedia) is important in the context of blockchains because doing so will create a new building block for all developers. This can enable global universal basic income distributions, bot resistant token airdrops, and one vote per person systems (Wikipedia). Worldcoin aims to create a Proof of Personhood, while at the same time fairly distributing a coin, also called, Worldcoin.

I’ll critique common criticisms and offer some exciting reasons to be optimistic about Worldcoin.

The common criticisms

Criticism #1: Centralized Database and Orb Manufacturing

The strongest criticism of Worldcoin is its centralized manufacturing of Orbs and database of iris hashes. A principle of crypto and web3 is not relying on a single gatekeeper. However, it is already clear that Worldcoin is already thinking about a decentralized future.

Why are the Orbs necessary? Worldcoin makes a strong case that iris scanning is the best way to uniquely identify persons. It even works on identical twins (Read Iris Recognition Ensures Uniqueness, Fraud Resistance, And Practicality section, Worldcoin.org). Competing projects use smartphone selfie cameras, but Worldcoin claims current selfie cameras on phones are not high enough resolution to be AI resistant and just won’t work at global scale.

“…at the scale of billions of people, there is simply not enough information in, for example, a selfie to reliably tell people apart.”

A highly accurate, tamper-resistant, and durable iris scanner for their needs doesn’t exist, hence manufacturing a new device is required. Chris Dixon from a16z, an investor in Worldcoin, suggests hardware with Orb level capabilities will probably make its way to phones in the future (tweet), which means Worldcoin won’t be the sole manufacturer of this tech in the long-term.

As for the centralized database of iris hashes, Remco Bloemen, Head of Blockchain at Worldcoin, would like the hashes to be stored in open state. Additionally, Worldcoin’s goal is to make everything “forkable”, which is a strong commitment that they intend to act in good faith (Vitalik on social implications of forking in blog post on legitimacy).

Progressive Decentralization is describes the playbook Worldcoin will follow. It is a process where a crypto native application will start more centralized, due to constraints and the immaturity of required decentralized technologies, then shifts to decentralization when possible (Progressive Decentralization: A Playbook for Building Crypto Applications by Jesse Walden).

Criticism #2: Use of Biometrics

In response to Worldcoin’s launch plans, Edward Snowden tweeted, “Don't use biometrics for anti-fraud. In fact, don't use biometrics for anything” (tweet). However, people willingly put their biometrics everywhere. People upload selfies to social media and people use fingerprint and face sensors to unlock their devices (The Guardian on iPhone5s fingerprint scanner). Worldcoin states they only need to store a hash of your iris, which means that no information about your iris can be retrieved from a hash. The risk of storing an iris hash seems extremely minimal in comparison to the types of public data that people are already comfortable posting online.

During the process of writing this article, Mark Zuckerberg proposed the idea of introducing biometrics to Oculus headsets to combat impersonation and fake accounts in the metaverse, in a Lex Fridman podcast. Even though Mark thinks Facebook/Meta is “years ahead” of anyone else in determining whether accounts are fake or real, by turning to biometrics, he is suggesting his current lead isn’t enough for a more personal and interactive metaverse future. With an estimated 10 million Oculus devices sold in the last few years, the potential for biometrics to become ubiquitous in hardware seems more and more likely.

Criticism #3: A 20% allocation of Worldcoin coin to the Worldcoin team and investors means only they can win

A full-time employee at Worldcoin, Chris Waclawek, responded to this sentiment. I do not see this criticism as concerning because Worldcoin coin could easily be replaced by another coin that is evenly distributed to all persons. For example, in a single day, a developer could create a new coin and airdrop an equal amount to every single person who has Proved their Personhood. There will likely be many competing attempts to do just this. The creation of a Proof of Personhood system is mostly decoupled from the Worldcoin coin. The Worldcoin coin only needs to retain value as an incentive to get people signed up (Aligning Incentives To Grow The Network, Worldcoin.org). For those looking to speculate, look to current governance token valuations, such as $UNI or $ENS, as to whether the Worldcoin coin could retain some notable value.

Criticism #4: The Orbs are Dystopian

While I do admit the orbs look like they came from a Black Mirror episode, rejecting them for this just isn’t a good reason. The association with dystopia is likely caused by a majority of science fiction media’s tendency to lean dystopian and focus on worst case scenarios.

Reasons to be optimistic

Reason #1: Privacy by Design

Worldcoin provides world class documentation and diagrams which explain their tech and “Privacy by Design” philosophy, “we have designed Worldcoin in a way that both requires as little personal data as possible and preserves the privacy and anonymity of its users” (Privacy by design, Worldcoin.org). Enabled by cryptography and zero-knowledge proofs, each persons’ Proof of Personhood is not linked to an iris hash, nor is any personal information such as name, email, or phone number.

Reason #2: The track record of the Worldcoin team

As early as 2013, Remco, Head of Blockchain, has worked on improving global coordination. A project called BitGov, “Voters without borders”, aimed at creating a global voting platform (BitGov explainer, Youtube). Although, it seemed to be a short-lived project and likely required a Proof of Personhood to keep out bots and people casting multiple votes.

Sam Altman, an investor in Worldcoin, who is credited with the initial push to start it, has “capped-profit” at another of startup he co-founded, OpenAI, where he is currently the CEO (OpenAI blog). It’s a new model for investors where profits after the cap are not returned to investors, they are sent to OpenAI’s nonprofit entity. This is an indicator that Altman is not interested in extracting profits from his projects.

Reason #3: Following open source and crypto practices

At launch, Worldcoin promised to open source code, and Worldcoin has done just that with code repositories containing references to sequencers and semaphore, a type of zero-knowledge proof (Github). Also, plans for an open source wallet and SDK have been announced.

Worldcoin is taking cues from Vitalik. He made the case that credible neutrality is a desirable characteristic for mechanism designs (Vitalik blog). Worldcoin states with regards to governance, grants, and partnerships, “We are committed to following credible neutrality as a key guiding principle in setting up these mechanisms.”

Post launch, Worldcoin builds trust by being open to criticisms, taking feedback, and designing in the open. Additionally, they aspire to decentralize,

Open to independent verification:

On degrees of decentralizing IrisHash:

Details of Iris Hash algorithm:

Deploying on a token transfer optimized Ethereum Optimisic Rollup, Hubble:

A contract to airdrop tokens to each person’s wallet, written by a previous Constitution DAO dev:

Lose an eye?

Reason #4: Over 120k field testing sign-ups

At the time of writing, this is double and an order of magnitude more sign-ups than the next Proof of Personhoods, BrightId and Proof of Humanity respectively (brightid.org) (proofofhumanity.id). Worldcoin has been operating for less time and appears to have a a much higher rate of sign-ups.

Field testing is expected through early 2022.

I hope this clears some concerns, gives credit to the Worldcoin team, and clarifies the potential centralization points.