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🥁 The End of Privacy? Hands on with Worldcoin

We share our firsthand experience with a Worldcoin orb!

Author

The BEN Team
July 25, 2023

Read time: 4 minutes

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The End of Privacy? Hands on with Worldcoin 🌎👀

Have you heard that Worldcoin just launched on Monday? We got to try a Worldcoin orb and we’re here to share our firsthand experience.

Worldcoin raised a whopping $250m over the past two years and were founded by none other than Sam Altman, the same guy who founded OpenAI, which created ChatGPT.

In a world where AI is becoming more and more indistinguishable from humans, Worldcoin is all about making sure that we can verify who's who in the digital world, while still keeping our privacy intact.

The way they do it is by having you scan your eyeballs using "The Orb" - which might sound a bit intimidating, but hey, it's not much different than using Face ID, right?

Worldcoin Orbs at ETH Global Lisbon

They're rolling out with ~150 Orbs in 35 cities around the globe. Once you've done the quick scan, you'll get your a Worldcoin ID that proves you're a real, unique person.

Worldcoin uses zero-knowledge (zK) proofs to make sure nobody else can see your private info. A “zK proof” is essentially a piece of a data protected by a secret code that no one but you knows, but that acts in a certain way so that others know it’s true. Think of it like chemistry but with passwords, where maybe you don’t know what inside a box but you can prove there must be something inside the box by weighing it.

So for Worldcoin, you’ll be able to prove your identity without revealing your identity. Crazy right? And way better than sending a picture of your passport to every company that need it.

Once you've got yourself a World ID, you can download the app and claim some $WLD tokens. Unfortunately, if you're living in the US, you're out of luck, thanks to the SEC scaring off cryptocurrency projects.

The token itself isn’t doing so hot. $WLD went up to $3.58 yesterday before coming back down to $1.92. Today it is back around $2.43 more.

Worldcoin's also been getting a negative reaction from the crypto community, with people vehemently against the idea of being required to use their real-world identity just to get a crypto address, especially via biometrics.

Even Vitalik expressed concerns over Worldcoin, saying that a global database of people’s irises is a centralization and privacy issue. He also says that since “The Orbs” are hardware devices that people have to share, we have no way of knowing if they’ve been tampered with.

Testing the iris-scanning feature

Meme Break 😌

🗞️ Trending News

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  5. US Department of Justice Needs 6-8 Weeks to Process Evidence Against Alex Mashinsky. He was arrested earlier this month and pleaded not guilty to securities fraud, commodities fraud, wire fraud, etc

  6. How Bitcoin Miners Can Stay Clear of the SEC Scrutiny. Bitcoin is a considered a commodity by the SEC, but bitcoin miners still have to be careful.

  7. $36M of Optimism Tokens to Be Unlocked on Sunday. People are speculating on whether the price will drop after the unlock.

  8. Judge in FTX Case Orders Gag on Contact with Media. Sam Bankman-Fried allegedly leaked private writings to “influence public opinion” ahead of his tiral.

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