Would you do this— Have your Eyeballs scanned in exchange for free Coins?

Worldcoin launched this week— a global Digital Identity and Digital Cash System. Users signup using their biometric data and are given a World ID + bonus World Coins. What could go wrong?

Worldcoin launched this week— with the ambitious task of creating a one World Digital Identity & Financial System. Whilst the launch memo reads like a feel good bed-time story, behind the glamour are very grave concerns indeed.

Whilst I had intended this article as a short glimpse into Worldcoin, it has taken on a mind of it’s own and ballooned in size— though maybe that in itself speaks volumes!

During these changing times, if we view anyone topic in isolation it may seem rather innocuous, however when we view one piece of the puzzle in conjunction with many surrounding pieces— the bigger picture gains more clarity.

If you are short for time, maybe just scroll straight down to the bottom of this article for my Personal Reflections— a summary of my feelings on Worldcoin & World ID.

A little Background info first…

Before diving into how Worldcoin works, the following video demonstrates concerns over Digital ID / Digital Wallets. You may find this interesting!

You can also read further background information here.

How does Worldcoin work?

The vision of Worldcoin is to become the world’s largest identity and financial public network, open to everyone regardless of their country, background or economic status.

Worldcoin works in three steps—

1. Download the World App— allows a person to set up their Worldcoin account and access a digital wallet connected to Worldcoin, Bitcoin, Ethereum and other digital and traditional currencies including stablecoins.

2. Signup for World ID— a person visits a Worldcoin Operator in person to have their iris biometrics recorded via an Orb, creating a unique personal identifier— ie a world digital passport.

3. Receive your free Worldcoin Tokens— once a persons unique personhood is verified, they then claim their share of free Worldcoin Tokens (WLD) on setup, and on a regular basis. The initial stages of a UBI— Universal Basic Income. Users can also use their World ID within the World App to learn about digital currencies and receive free airdrops of Bitcoin, Ethereum and more.

Note that Worldcoin can only be used in countries where Worldcoin Tokens are legally available. Currently the United States is exempt from Worldcoin— maybe this is due to their own CBDC currently down the pipeline with FedNow having launched as a stepping stone in this direction?

Who is behind Worldcoin?

Worldcoin is co-founded by Sam Altman, the head of the company behind the artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot ChapGPT, Open AI.

Alex Blania, a German physicist, is the other co-founder of Worldcoin, notably the CEO. Blania graduated from University of Erlangen–Nuremberg with a BSc in physics as well as mechanical engineering. He started his Master thesis research at Max Planck Institute for the Science of Light, finishing this work at Caltech. While at Caltech he met Sam Altman with whom he co-founded Worldcoin.

Worldcoin is also supported by two organisations— The Worldcoin Foundation and Tools for Humanity.

The Worldcoin Foundation is an exempted limited guarantee foundation company, which is a type of non-profit, incorporated in the Cayman Islands. The information available is limited at present— who are the donors?

Tools for Humanity is World Coin’s parent company, a technology company built to ensure ‘a more just economic system’. Tools for Humanity is run by Alex Blania (CEO), and Sam Altman (Chairman).

The Wall Street Journal reported on Jan. 5 this year that Sam Altmans Open AI had a potential valuation of $29 billion. Microsoft has made a $10 billion investment in Open AI.

Hot on the heels of the success of Open AI, Worldcoin earlier this year had been seeking investors to raise a further $120 million to a valuation of $3 million.

In May 2023, Worldcoin announced it has raised $115 million from investors led by Blockchain Capital. Venture Capitalist Andreessen Horowitz’s crypto fund a16z Crypto, Bain Capital Crypto, and Distributed Global also participated in the Series C funding round, according to Bloomberg.

Previous investors in the Worldcoin project include California-based venture capital fund Khosla Ventures,  Linkedin co-founder Reid Hoffman and the disgraced founder of FTX crypto exchange Sam Bankman-Fried.

Tools for Humanity has also brought on Twitter’s former VP of global communications Rebecca Hahn. According to Axios, Hahn  joined the team after being one of the last communications professionals standing after Elon Musk’s takeover of the social platform.

The Worldcoin ‘Orb’ Biometric Scanner

To obtain a World ID, peoples eyes are scanned by a Worldcoin Orb— and in exchange you receive Worldcoin tokens. Plus, if you become a Worldcoin Orb Operator you earn money for everyone persons eyes that you scan.

The questions is, what data is actually being collected about you, where/how is being stored, and how is it being used?

Worldcoin Orbs are 5-pound bowling ball sized chromatic spheres that scan your eyeball— via many sensors, a thermal camera, a 3D time-of-flight camera and AI-powered neural networks. Once imaging takes place and an iris code is calculated— you receive your unique identity code with the world— your World ID.

Apparently the Iris Scan itself is deleted, and instead a series of hashes (data ID) is created from your Scan and this is what gives you your unique identifier— your World ID.

Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin expressed his concerns about Worldcoin. He argued that the platform’s iris scans could be harvesting more information than the company is letting on, or that someone could potentially scan someone else’s iris in order to determine whether they had a World ID.

There is not much information available or a detailed understanding of the exact biometrics collected during an Orb scan, however Worldcoin does have a page that gives you a glimpse inside the Orb.

As Edward Snowden tweeted— This 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.

The Worldcoin Foundation states that they adhere to strict privacy guidelines and "are continuing to assess local laws and regulations to ensure compliance… With regard to GDPR, Worldcoin is fully compliant with all laws and regulations governing biometric data collection and data transfer, including Europe’s General Data Protection Regulation."

In May 2023, TechCrunch reported that hackers had been able to steal login credentials of several of Worldcoin's operators' personal devices including their credentials to the Worldcoin operator app. Worldcoin's spokesperson said that no personal user data was compromised though, because the operator app does not access user data.

In April 2022, a report from MIT Technology Review highlighted Worldcoin's controversial practices in low-income countries, citing that Worldcoin takes advantage of impoverished people to grow its network. Pseudonymous crypto influencer ZachXBT tweeted— Most alarming to me is how the WorldCoin team has boasted about how many users they have. When in reality they have been exploiting people in developing countries.

Worldcoin did issue a 25-page rebuttal to MIT Technology Review’s criticisms. “We want to make it very clear that Worldcoin is not a data company and our business model does not involve exploiting or selling personal user data,” it wrote. “Worldcoin is only interested in a user’s uniqueness—i.e., that they have not signed up for Worldcoin before—not their identity.”

Why did Worldcoin choose to use this kind of Iris Biometric data for proof of being a real human?

As Blania has shared, many of the systems that are live today will get quite challenged in a world of [improving AI]. It’s going to be very easy to fake things on the internet. Asking someone to do certain tasks, like CAPTCHA, or a more complicated form of CAPTCHA, will eventually break. You fundamentally need to bridge to the physical world, and measure what it means to be a human.

See the list of 35+ cities in 20+ countries across five continents where Orbs will be available between now and the end of 2023.

Worldcoin— Privacy & Security

Convenience, accessibility, ease of transacting— these are all promising benefits of advancing technologies & AI. However are we trading off convenience for global surveillance and lack of privacy ?

In the words of Worldcoin— we don’t want to know who you are, just that you are unique! Worldcoin claims that the images of the user and their iris pattern are permanently deleted after signing up, unless users opt-in to allow them to be stored in the system as training data. The training data is not connected to Worldcoin tokens, transactions or World ID, the company says.

Biometricupdate has noted that privacy organizations such as the U.S.-based Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) are arguing that despite receiving free tokens, users are paying a high price for the potential risks of hacking and exploiting their biometric data.

“Mass collections of biometrics like Worldcoin threaten people’s privacy on a grand scale, both if the company misuses the information it collects, and if that data is stolen,” says EPIC counsel Jake Wiener. “Ultimately, Worldcoin wants to become the default digital ID and a global currency without democratic buy-in at the start, that alone is a compelling reason not to turn over your biometrics, personal information and geolocation data to a private company.”

UK privacy campaign group Big Brother Watch has also criticized the project, with senior advocacy officer Madeleine Stone arguing that digital ID systems “increase state and corporate control over individuals’ lives.”

Vitalik Buterin is a Russian-Canadian computer programmer, and founder of Ethereum. In his latest article he gives his insights on what he thinks about Worldcoin & biometric proof of personhood—

In his post he details that there are four major risks that immediately come to mind:

• Privacy. The registry of iris scans may reveal information. At the very least, if someone else scans your iris, they can check it against the database to determine whether or not you have a World ID. Potentially, iris scans might reveal more information.

• Accessibility. World IDs are not going to be reliably accessible unless there are so many Orbs that anyone in the world can easily get to one.

• Centralization. The Orb is a hardware device, and we have no way to verify that it was constructed correctly and does not have backdoors. Hence, even if the software layer is perfect and fully decentralized, the Worldcoin Foundation still has the ability to insert a backdoor into the system, letting it create arbitrarily many fake human identities.

• Security. Users' phones could be hacked, users could be coerced into scanning their irises while showing a public key that belongs to someone else, and there is the possibility of 3D-printing "fake people" that can pass the iris scan and get World IDs.

He further goes onto say…

Worldcoin depends on specialized hardware, which opens up the challenge of trusting the orb manufacturers to have constructed the orbs correctly.

In addition to issues specific to Worldcoin, Buterin also discusses concerns that affect proof-of-personhood designs in general. The major ones that he detailed in his post are—

1. 3D-printed fake people: one could use AI to generate photographs or even 3D prints of fake people that are convincing enough to get accepted by the Orb software. If even one group does this, they can generate an unlimited number of identities.

2. Possibility of selling IDs: someone can provide someone else's public key instead of their own when registering, giving that person control of their registered ID, in exchange for money. This seems to be happening already. In addition to selling, there's also the possibility of renting IDs to use for a short time in one application.

3. Phone hacking: if a person's phone gets hacked, the hacker can steal the key that controls their World ID.

4. Government coercion to steal IDs: a government could force their citizens to get verified while showing a QR code belonging to the government. In this way, a malicious government could gain access to millions of IDs. In a biometric system, this could even be done covertly: governments could use obfuscated Orbs to extract World IDs from everyone entering their country at the passport control booth.

Note that (1.) is specific to biometric proof-of-personhood systems. (2.) and (3.) are common to both biometric and non-biometric designs. (4.) is also common to both, though the techniques that are required would be quite different in both cases; in this section I will focus on the issues in the biometric case.

These are pretty serious weaknesses. Some already have been addressed in existing protocols, others can be addressed with future improvements, and still others seem to be fundamental limitations.

Worldcoin— Morality ?

The glossy veneer of Worldcoin promotes itself as the answer to countering bots & fake virtual identities— essentially the ability to authenticate yourself online globally. Whilst Worldcoin sounds virtuous, the manner in which they are establishing themselves possibly questions their moral compass?

Plus the founder Sam Altman has been questioned for his openness in the past!

As I mentioned briefly above, the MIT Technology Review article Deception, exploited workers, and cash handouts: How Worldcoin recruited its first half a million test users— the article states that Worldcoin has taken advantage of impoverished people to grow its network.

Investigations revealed wide gaps between Worldcoin’s public messaging, which focused on protecting privacy, and what users experienced. It was found that the company’s representatives used deceptive marketing practices, collected more personal data than it acknowledged, and failed to obtain meaningful informed consent.

Whilst Worldcoin’s shiny marketing is about alleviating global poverty, it appears to have angered the very people it claims to be helping.

Worldcoin— Self-Sovereign Identity

Self-Sovereign Identity (SSI) is about owning your identity online— a digital passport or wallet that proves you are you. Maybe this sounds great at first glance, but as you dive a little deeper alarm bells begin to ring.

SSI can be seen as a ONE master key that unlocks everything— accessing the internet, banking, websites— absolutely everything. No more messy passwords, you have ONE SSI that can access the lot. SSI is seen as your AI Digital Twin that ‘knows’ everything about you— preferences, what you like, voting preferences— everything!

Dele Atanda, founder of the Internet.Foundation and founder of metaMe declared mission of his Internet.Foundation is “to get a billion people self-sovereign by 2030.”

Without deviating too much into the pitfalls of SSI, it’s not hard to see a future where SSI/Digital ID controls what you can/can’t access int he world. As I shared in there is a crack in everything— ‘We must not develop amnesia regarding the importance of safeguarding our democratic values— or blindly defer our self-authority…’

The question is, could Worldcoin with it’s global World ID be the mechanism to achieve this goal?

Alex Blania (Worldcoin CoFounder) was asked during a recent interview— ‘You haven’t used these words, but you’re essentially trying to solve Self-Sovereign ID, or SSID. Is that right?

His answer was: YES

Worldcoin— Universal Basic Income (UBI’s)

The goal of Worldcoin is to create a system that will, eventually, freely distribute tokens to all eight billion people on the planet, as a form of Universal Basic Income (UBI). UBI is already been trialled around the world from Finland to Japan and is currently being trialled in the UK.

Worldcoin has an audacious premise: AI will continue to improve and eventually evolve into AGI (advanced general intelligence), meaning it’s smarter than humans. That will spur leaps in productivity. This will create wealth. And instead of that wealth being snatched by elites, it should be fairly distributed to all of humanity – literally everyone – as a form of UBI, or universal basic income, which will empower billions. That UBI will come in the form of a cryptocurrency. That crypto is Worldcoin (WLD).

But as the saying goes, there is no such thing as a free lunch!

Who pays for this? The way the system is currently configured, once you’ve signed up via an Orb, every week you can claim 1 Worldcoin. That’s the early kernel of UBI. Who’s footing the bill for this token that will suddenly appear in the wallets (or eyeballs) of everyone on the planet?

Jesse Walden, an early investor in the project and general partner at Variant, acknowledges that “who pays” is a good question to ask, but says “I don’t know that there’s a single definitive answer right now, or that there needs to be.” The way he sees it, “Most startups don’t have a business model figured out at the beginning,” and they typically focus on growth, and the growth of the network eventually begets use cases and value.

Sam Altman has a more pragmatic answer. In the short term, Altman says, “The hope is that as people want to buy this token, because they believe this is the future, there will be inflows into this economy. New token-buyers is how it gets paid for, effectively.”

The long-term and grander vision, of course, is that the fruits of AGI (Advanced General Intelligence) will confer financial rewards that can be bestowed upon humanity. (Hence the name of Worldcoin’s parent company – Tools for Humanity.) How that happens is anyone’s guess. “Eventually, you can imagine all sorts of things in the post-AGI world,” Altman says, “but we have no specific plans for that. That’s not what this is about, at this phase.”

The video below provides a great overview of UBI. Why it could be useful, PLUS the biggest concerns regarding its implementation & use.

Worldcoin & WEF

Have you noticed that the World Economic Forum (WEF) seems to popup everywhere, as if having a finger in every pie! Yet again, UBI’s & global Digital ID are programs that are fully supported by WEF.

This WEF article title Why we should all have a basic income is a great place to start— it’s clever emotive writing that lures the reader into thinking ‘hell yeh, this sounds great, a would love a promise of equal opportunity’.

And this WEF article talks about the pro’s & con’s of UBI and adds into the debate ‘carbon dividends’— if/why carbon dividends can be used as UBI.

Tie all this into WEF’s reimaging Digital ID, and latest discussion on how ‘Digital Cash’ will force climate agenda onto people— the bigger plan is visible in plain sight.

Keep in mind too that Sam Altman (remember is the founder of Open AI & coFounder of Worldcoin) is listed on the WEF website, and reportedly is a WEF Young Global Leader graduate.

Worldcoin & the Future

After collecting more than 2 million users during a beta period, Worldcoin on launching this week has stated that it is now going to ramp up its eyeball-scanning operations to 35 cities across 20 countries.

View a real-time chart of signups here. Sam Altman tweeted on the 27th July— day 3 of @worldcoin launch, crazy lines around the world. one person getting verified every 8 seconds now.

Worldcoin aims to establish universal access to the global economy regardless of country or background. It is designed to become the world's largest human identity and financial network, giving ownership to everyone. All with the intention of welcoming every person on the planet and establishing a place for all of us to benefit in the age of AI.
worldcoin.org/home

Once users have their WorldID – which Worldcoin insists is privacy-preserving – it can be used, in the future, as a sort of skeleton key to access other apps and websites, such as Twitter or ChatGPT. They’re already dabbling with this functionality. WorldID recently announced integration with Okta, a German identity and access management provider, and more partnerships are in the works.

Could Worldcoin or World ID somehow link with CBDC?

The IMF are working hard on the concept of a global CBDC— says IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva. According to Georgievahe, the IMF plans to roll out one single digital currency that will be accepted globally in an effort to “connect countries” and make transactions “fairer.”

Are we seeing a move towards a global digital ID platform via the backdoor? Or is it happening before our very eyes (pun intended) through Worldcoin?

Agustin Carstens, the General Manager of the Bank of International Settlements (BIS) and a WEF member, advocates for the advantages of a cashless society— citing CBDC controls & gives permission on how your money can be spent.

Cecilia Skingsley, another WEF member, and head of the Innovation Hub at the Bank for International Settlements (BIS), stated that CBDC is not a universal solution— insisting that a global CBDC must be linked with digital IDs in a package. Skingsley framed this as the need to advance “digital literacy” where locking people’s sensitive data into digital ID should come first. World ID maybe?

Skingsley compared forcing the public to accept such a plan to society having to be pushed into adopting the use of electricity, or sewage systems in the past. “I think we need to be a little bit bold here right in the sense that we shouldn’t get in the way of the private sector, but I think sometimes in history you have to push society into new equilibriums… now we need to do it for money, and it will be good for banks as well when society takes these steps”. [Quote from video below from 28:45 onwards].

Watch from 27:00 onwards…

Central banks are realising CBDCs will have to be intimately linked to identity in the future. Does World Coin provide a mechanism for this to occur ?

IMF deputy managing director and former People’s Bank of China (PBoC) deputy governor Bo Li said that CBDC can allow gov agencies & private sector players to program/allow targeted policy functions (eg welfare payments, food coupons). By programming CBDC, the money can be precisely targeted for what kind of people can own & what kind of use this money. He also explained how institutions could take advantage of CBDC transactional data by following the model of Communist China where non-traditional data can be very useful for financial service providers to give me a credit score.

During the World Economic Forum’s (WEF) recent Annual Meeting, Eswar Prasad former IMF Chief of China division, currently Tolani Senior Professor of Trade Policy at Cornell University, gave a chilling insight into the rationale behind the globalist elite’s interest in pushing toward a cashless society. Prasad spoke about the coming Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs) and how unelected authoritarians will be able to control the public by managing the regulation of society’s spending.

Again I ask the question, does Worldcoins World ID provide the mechanism for a global CBDC?

As Twitter founder Jack Dorsey stated just this week— at no time should a corporation or state own any part of the global financial system

My Personal Reflections

I find it interesting that Worldcoin launched the same week as Oppenheimer— The story of American scientist, J. Robert Oppenheimer, and his role in the development of the atomic bomb.

Oppenheimer wrestles with the moral dilemma of inventing a technology that could ultimately destroy humanity. Is the inventor to blame for what the US Government chose to do with the technology in 1945?

Whilst Worldcoin’s Sam Altman & Alex Blania may have an altruistic vision of Worldcoin, World ID and UBI, what if other people use this technology for evil? As I have shown throughout this article, there are many world players chomping-at-the-bit to get a hold of this type of technology for nefarious purposes.

Putting to one side my deep concerns for privacy, surveillance & control there is another area that I feel deeply about— and this is the sacredness of our Eyes. As the saying goes ‘The Eyes are the Window to the Soul’.

As an Iridologist for the past 30+ years, looking into the eyes of another person is both an enchanting and deeply humbling experience. The eyes express the divine template of a person— their physical health, personality, and constitutional strengths & weakness. An experienced Iridologist can discern from gazing into a persons iris a ‘Soul Blueprint’ of sorts— a expression of a Soul having a human experience— providing deeply personal information about a persons divine makeup.

Selling a scanned blueprint of your eyes in return for coins just feels really off— for me it’s akin to selling your Soul to the Devil!