The above image was made with stable diffusion using the prompt 'a silver orb scanning an eye.'
Worldcoin officially launched today. Founded by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, this crypto project's overarching aim is to connect financial accounts with identifying biometric data. Towards this end, Worldcoin is rolling out the World ID, which relies on biometric data collected by a process called Orbing.
Worldcoin uses head-sized 'Orb' devices to scan user eyeballs and maybe collect other biometric data. The collected data is then hashed using a one-way function and the generated hash is uploaded to Worldcoin's system. Local orb operators handle all of the scanning and uploading.
The company seems to think that it's created the ultimate capcha. And it's true that Orbing has strong potential to keep bots off of exclusively human networks. But Worldcoin's initial experiments with their tech throughout the developing world have been called crypto-colonialism. Here's some of what an MIT Technology Review piece had to say about that:
Our investigation revealed wide gaps between Worldcoin's public messaging, which focused on protecting privacy, and what users experienced. We found that the company's representatives used deceptive marketing practices, collected more personal data than it acknowledged, and failed to obtain meaningful informed consent. ... The biometric information is used to generate an "IrisHash," a code that is stored locally on the orb. The code is never shared, according to Worldcoin, but rather is used to check whether that IrisHash already exists in Worldcoin's database. ... Pete Howson, a senior lecturer at Northumbria University who researches cryptocurrency in international development, categorizes Worldcoin's actions as a sort of crypto-colonialism, where "blockchain and cryptocurrency experiments are being imposed on vulnerable communities essentially because…these people can’t push back," he told MIT Technology Review.
In its whitepaper, Worldcoin claims to be "a privacy-preserving global identity network." Here's what the company has to say about what exactly happens with user data:
Users start enrollment by creating a Semaphore keypair on their smartphone, hereafter referred to as the World ID keypair. The Orb associates the public key with a user's iris code, whose current sole purpose is to be used in the uniqueness check. If this check succeeds, the World ID public key gets inserted into an identity set maintained by a smart contract on the Ethereum blockchain. The updated state is subsequently bridged to Optimism and Polygon PoS so World ID can be used natively on those chains.
So your eye scan itself works like a private key whose hash is evaluated for uniqueness. This hash is associated with your app account, which has its own keypair. Presumably, you would have direct access to this account's private key. And account setup relies on in-person Orb operators.
In 2017, Syrian refugees in Jordan received food aid with eye scans through the UN's World Food Program. Funds were distributed on the Ethereum network. But the refugees weren't given the funds directly. Instead, the funds were sent to merchants. While the program proved the usefulness of blockchain in international aid, it had total nanny state vibes.
Worldcoin has grander ambitions. Its website says that it's creating "a potential path to AI-funded UBI." That's a laudable goal, but this whole business with Orbing seems both unnecessary and dystopian. If Orb operators are necessary to make Worldcoin's system work, good old-fashioned public notaries could perform the same function, verifying account holder identities by inspecting government documents. This method of identity authentication may not be perfect, but it at least keeps our biometric data secure.
In general, the World ID aim of creating a global database of eye scan hashes seems like a privacy disaster in the making. Worldcoin claims to be putting privacy front and center, but I'm not convinced. The blockchain is permanent, companies come and go, and the system Worldcoin is building could be compromised by hostile parties at any point in the future. We just don't know.
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