It has been 66 days since OpenAI CEO Sam Altman launched his crypto project Worldcoin to the public, and millions have already signed up for it — some enamored by the tech, others lured by the free tokens you get on signing up, and most driven by the hype. Still, the project seemingly has just as many, if not more, skeptics and critics.
Naysayers reacted to the hype around Worldcoin with almost the same level of intensity as its backers — Kenya famously halted the project from scanning any more of its citizens — but the company is still moving forward with its big plans.
“I think it’s super healthy for people to be skeptical,” Tiago Sada, head of product for Tools for Humanity and a core contributor to Worldcoin, said on TechCrunch’s Chain Reaction podcast recently. “At the same time, we have seen a ton of adoption . . . When we first started going out, we were expecting a lot more skepticism, but people just are really, really excited by the Orb.”
Since the project was launched, about 2.325 million people, across 120 countries, have gone face-to-face with the Worldcoin Orb to sign up by scanning their irises. In the past seven days, about 39,000 new accounts have been made, and there have been over 130,000 daily wallet transactions, according to the company’s website.
Worldcoin has also been on a bit of a world tour starting in April, hitting major cities like Tokyo, Miami, New York City and San Francisco. In particular, it’s enjoyed a bunch of traction in smaller, developing regions, though the company would like everyone to believe traction is mostly spread out across the world.
“In Portugal, more than 1% of the population has already signed up for Worldcoin, so we’re starting to see some real traction all over the world,” Sada said. The project hit that mark in February, so overall adoption in the country has probably risen beyond that number since.
As of Tuesday, the company shared that over 200,000 people had verified their World ID in Chile, marking over 1% of that country’s population as well.
Tools for Humanity / Worldcoin’s Orb. Image Credits: Jacquelyn Melinek / TechCrunch
While Sada couldn’t pinpoint in which country Worldcoin has seen the most adoption, he said during its beta testing period, it focused on four markets: Buenos Aires, Argentina; Nairobi, Kenya; Lisbon, Portugal; and Bangalore, India.
The appeal is easy to understand, since the tech feels like it’s straight out of sci-fi books, even though it’s relatively straightforward in reality. Up close, the Orb looks utopian and dystopian at the same time. It’s shaped like a silver bowling ball but is heavier than you’d expect for the size due to its internal battery. Seeing it made me want to take pictures of it, touch it and even look into it (although I opted out of scanning my irises).
After you sign up for Worldcoin by scanning your irises through the Orb, you are assigned an “iris code” or “World ID” that grants you access to the projects’ application and provides you a digital passport, Sada said. The verification process purportedly allows people to prove their identity, and the iris code is used to make sure they don’t go and get another one.
And if you don’t have irises to scan, the protocol also supports other types of verification, like using your phone number.
So far Tools for Humanity, which is the team building Worldcoin, has made 2,000 orbs, which are designed to represent the planet, Sada said. “Where the two halves come together, that’s the exact same angle as the Earth.”
The company has raised a significant amount of money along the way as well. It raised a $115 million Series C back in May from investors like Blockchain Capital, a16z, Bain Capital Crypto and Distributed Global, in addition to $100 million at a $3 billion valuation in March 2022.
The backlash
The company has faced some backlash from critics, who allege it is targeting developing economies. Given that the project gives most participants (outside the U.S. and some other countries) 25 Worldcoin (WLD) tokens, worth roughly $47, in exchange for signing up, it can definitely be perceived as exploitative.
Sada argued that giving out the free tokens and going to developing countries was fair because most projects, especially in crypto and tech, focus on emerging markets, as “those are the easier ones to operate in.” But he held that the company’s stance is to go “as broad as possible and be as inclusive as possible.”
Part of Worldcoin’s reasoning is that it’s harder for many people in developing countries to prove their identity through digital avenues because not everyone in such regions has access to or uses technology in as widespread a manner as people in more developed parts of the world. “More than half the population of the world doesn’t have IDs [they] can use digitally,” Sada said.
And the “age of AI is upon us,” he added, stressing the difficulty in differentiating between real and fake personas online as AI tech advances.
“Today it’s really, really hard to know what is human and what is not,” Sada said. “The more artificial intelligence advances, especially over the next five years, [the more] it’ll just become exponentially more difficult to tell humans apart. And at the same time, it’s becoming more and more important.”
Not everyone seems to be convinced by that argument, though. In August, Kenya’s Office of the Data Protection Commissioner (ODPC) ordered Tools for Humanity to stop collecting personal data in Kenya.
The country was one of the first to launch sign-ups but quickly did an about-face, citing concerns with the “authenticity and legality” of Worldcoin’s activities in the areas of security, financial services and data protection.
Sada said the company is pausing its efforts in Kenya right now, saying the “government wants to take another look.” It had previously said it was working with the country to resume iris scans.
Discord, Auth0 on board
The entire project is still in the early stages, but it’s attracted a bunch of companies, including Discord. Any Discord server can install a plug-in that allows moderators to “assign roles to real humans” and use the technology to verify that people are real, Sada said.
In June, Worldcoin also partnered with Okta’s Auth0, an authentication platform used by thousands of websites, to allow companies to offer sign-in options with Worldcoin on their websites.
“Over the next few weeks and months and definitely years, we expect to see a lot more companies announce integrations with World ID,” Sada added.
As for what’s next, Worldcoin is going to focus on rolling out its current products and scaling them. Like any platform, its network will really only become more useful as more people join it.
“All of our focus is figuring out how we get these current products into the hands of as many people as possible,” Sada said.