OpenAI’s Sam Altman Launches Iris-Scanning Worldcoin Crypto Project

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman during a meeting at the Station F in Paris on May 26, 2023. Joel Saget/AFP via Getty Images

The cryptocurrency project Worldcoin, founded by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, began its rollout on July 24, which features an innovative iris-scanning “Orb” designed to authenticate a person’s uniqueness.

Worldcoin co-founders Alex Blania and Mr. Altman said the project could drastically increase economic opportunity, scale a reliable solution for distinguishing humans from artificial intelligence (AI), enable a global democratic process, and potentially pave the way for AI-funded universal basic income (UBI).

“More than three years ago, we founded Worldcoin with the ambition of creating a new identity and financial network owned by everyone; the rollout begins today,” the project’s co-founders said in a statement.

“Worldcoin consists of a privacy-preserving digital identity (World ID) and, where laws allow, a digital currency (WLD) received simply for being human,” they added.

“We hope that, where the rules are less clear, such as in the United States, steps will be taken so more people can benefit from both.”

The project’s core offering is its World ID, which the company describes as a “digital passport” to prove that its holder is a real human, not an AI bot.

Customers can download the World App, the company’s first protocol-compatible wallet, and visit an “Orb,” a biometric verification device, to obtain a World ID.

The Orb, a silver ball approximately the size of a bowling ball, will verify if the customer is a real human and authenticate the person’s uniqueness while ensuring complete privacy.

According to Worldcoin, it is estimated that more than 4 billion people worldwide “lack a legal, digitally-verifiable identity,” which critically limits their participation in the global economy as well as access to critical services like healthcare, government aid, and financial services.

Mr. Blania stated that in the age of AI chatbots like ChatGPT, capable of generating human-like language, the need for proof of personhood is no longer a topic of serious debate, but rather “whether or not the proof of personhood solutions we have can be privacy-first, decentralized and maximally inclusive.”

“Through its unique technology, Worldcoin aims to provide anyone in the world, regardless of background, geography or income, access to the growing digital and global economy in a privacy preserving and decentralized way,” he said in a blog post.

The project has 2 million users from its beta period, and with Monday’s launch, Worldcoin is scaling up “orbing” operations to 35 cities in 20 countries. As an enticement, those who sign up in certain countries will receive Worldcoin’s cryptocurrency token WLD.

WLD’s price rose in early trading on Monday. On the world’s largest exchange, Binance, it hit a peak of $5.29 and at 1000 GMT was at $2.49 from a starting price of $0.15, having seen $25.1 million of trading volume, according to Binance’s website.

Concerns Over Potential Implications

Former U.S. intelligence contractor Edward Snowden has previously raised concerns about Worldcoin keeping a database of people’s iris scans and that the project may be overlooking the potential implications of such data storage.

“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!'” Mr. Snowden said on Twitter on Oct. 24, 2021.

“Yeah, but you save the hashes produced by the scans. Hashes that match future scans,” he added. “Don’t catalogue eyeballs.”

Worldcoin said that during the six months of its beta phase, the project had verified the authenticity of over 40,000 individuals per week. With the availability of 1,500 Orbs, the sign-up capacity has increased more than fivefold globally; 2 million people have already signed up for World ID.

In countries like Spain, where over 150,000 individuals have already verified their World ID, the project plans to scale its existing operations up to three times in the upcoming months, it stated.

Reuters contributed to this report.