Worldcoin frenzy: Every 8 seconds one person's eye gets scanned

Despite skepticism, the recently launched Worldcoin (WLD), a token for the digital identity project co-developed by Sam Altman, the co-founder and CEO of OpenAI, the platform behind the artificial intelligence (AI) tool ChatGPT, has gathered massive interest.

Indeed, as Altman himself noted, willing participants have been lining up before Worldcoin facilities around the world to have their irises scanned in order to take part in the project, as evident in the video that the WLD co-founder shared in a tweet on July 26.

According to him, the rate of people scanning their eyes with ‘the Orb’ gadget and verifying their identity for participation in this blockchain project is one person every eight seconds, despite Worldcoin being only three days into the public launch.

At the same time, Twitter user Mark Mcgrath shared a video and details of the process of the Orb scanning one’s eye, which involves going to a Worldcoin office, showing the QR code from the Worldcoin app, and the Worldcoin employee holding up the Orb to one’s face and scanning their iris.

Widespread criticism

Interestingly, Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey reacted to Altman’s tweet with a disappointed face emoji, showing his dislike and concerns with the project and the sheer size of the army of enthusiastic participants. Indeed, Dorsey had earlier made an ominous comment on the project’s launch, stating: “visit the Orb or the Orb will visit you.”

Significantly, Dorsey is far from being the only one in his criticism, with Ethereum (ETH) co-founder Vitalik Buterin arguing that it could lead to “unavoidable privacy leaks, further erosion of people’s ability to navigate the internet anonymously, coercion by authoritarian governments, and the potential impossibility of being secure.”

In the meantime, the co-founder of the decentralized finance (DeFi) security platform SlowMist, known as Cosine, referred to Worldcoin as an “evil creation” should it succeed, although “it has a high probability of failure,” as Finbold reported on July 25.

Other critics include a pro-XRP legal expert, John E. Deaton, who shared a video of an interview with the project’s co-founders Altman and Alex Blania, in which the latter dodged the question on the WLD distribution “because of the regulatory uncertainty” in the US, which the lawyer said was a “signal to RUN AWAY as fast as you can” from Worldcoin.

Meanwhile, Worldcoin’s native token, WLD, was at press time changing hands at the price of $2.19, recording a decline of 7.85% in the last 24 hours but still holding on to the 23.94% gain on its weekly chart, according to the most recent information retrieved from the cryptocurrency market monitoring site CoinMarketCap.

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