protos.com
World Network — previously Worldcoin — is offering anybody willing to pay a $100 deposit the chance to buy and operate one of its controversial eye-scanning orbs — but details behind the financial incentives remain murky.
Pre-ordering one of the orbs allows you to become a “Community Operator” and gives you the dubious pleasure of being able to register the eyeballs of wannabe World users yourself. However, details of whatever compensation you could expect to receive remain sparse.
Indeed, they’re not even explained in the pre-order page or terms and conditions.
Orb operators have traditionally been hired by Worldcoin and worked as contractors rather than employees. Under this “Operator Agreement,” they were paid on a commission basis that considered the number of eyeballs (signups) they could verify.
World has confirmed to Protos that buyers of the orbs will be compensated in a similar fashion while under the “Community Operator Agreement.”
However, World Network switched from USDC payments to paying operators with its WLD crypto token last year. Buyers from the US aren’t allowed to use WLD, so it’s unclear how they’ll be paid or whether they’ll be stuck with a token they cannot cash out.
Regardless, World Network will be hoping that it can finally add to the four orbs it currently has active in the US. Countries banned from pre-orders include Iran, North Korea, Russia, Syria, Cuba, Sudan, or the Crimea, Luhansk, Donetsk, Kherson or Zaporizhzhia regions of Ukraine.
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How much it’ll cost to take control of one of the orbs will apparently be revealed once “production nears.” The details of the Community Operator Agreement will also be published at this time.
Buyers may also be expected to source their own permits and jurisdiction approval in order to operate the orb.
World’s new tactic may well be a push to recruit new users after its missed its eyeball verification target by a mammoth 994 million. There are over 7.8 million verifications listed on its site at the time of writing.
Worldcoin was launched in July 2023 but rebranded to World Network last October. The company says it did this because “the name ‘Worldcoin’ no longer encapsulates the mission of the project — to accelerate every human.”