Worldcoin says crypto technology has reached just 3% of the world’s population so far — and that there needs to be a “successful, concerted effort to achieve widespread, global adoption.”
More than 130,000 people around the world have had their eyeballs scanned to get their hands on free cryptocurrency.
Worldcoin says crypto technology has reached just 3% of the world’s population so far — and that there needs to be a “successful, concerted effort to achieve widespread, global adoption.”
The Andreessen Horowitz-backed project makes use of a custom biometric device known as the Worldcoin Orb that verifies a person’s uniqueness through iris recognition — ensuring they can’t receive the crypto they’re entitled to twice.
Although the use of such biometric data might raise alarm bells among some privacy advocates, Worldcoin says zero knowledge cryptography is used to ensure that information remains confidential.
So far, 25 Orb operators have been onboarded — and collectively, they are operating 30 devices in 12 countries across four continents: Africa, South America, Europe and Asia.
Ambitious targets have been set for Worldcoin’s rollout, and the project is hoping to reach a staggering one billion people in the coming years.
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How the Project Works
A maximum of 10 billion Worldcoin tokens will exist, with about 20% dedicated to maintaining the project and ensuring that Orbs can be manufactured and rolled out.
In order to create an incentive for users to sign up sooner rather than later, greater numbers of tokens will be offered to those who join the project early. However, it’s difficult to put an exact monetary value on the tokens that any of them will receive at this point.
It’s hoped that tokens will start to be given away from early next year, meaning those who have had their eyeballs scanned will be able to redeem their coins.
Edward Snowden, the former NSA and CIA contractor who released a trove of classified files about government programs aimed at the wide surveillance of citizens, was among those who expressed concern about the project. He tweeted:
— Edward Snowden (@Snowden) October 23, 2021This looks like it produces a global (hash) database of people's iris scans (for "fairness"), and waves away the implications by saying "we deleted the scans!"
Yeah, but you save the *hashes* produced by the scans. Hashes that match *future* scans.
Don't catalogue eyeballs. https://t.co/uAk0NYGeZu
