Good morning. Experts at Forrester predict that Twitter... sorry, I mean X, will either shut down or be acquired within the next 12 months. What do you think?
In today’s Digest:
- Beauty: In the eye of the orb holder?
- How to stalk your competitors on autopilot
- Borrow from only the best LinkedIn posts
An eye for an eye gets the whole world UBI?
Yesterday marked the official launch of Worldcoin, a pioneering cryptocurrency and human identification project co-founded by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and quantum systems researcher Alex Blania.
What is Worldcoin, you ask? Worldcoin is essentially two things: A human identification system that scans your eyes, and a digital currency referred to as ‘the Worldcoin token’ (WLD). If successful, it might provide a path to an Universal Basic Income (UBI) — bankrolled by AI.
Why was Worldcoin created? Beyond the idea of AI-funded UBI, the Tools for Humanity team (Worldcoin's founding entity) hopes that this project will drastically enhance economic opportunities, provide a reliable way to distinguish humans from AI online while maintaining privacy, and foster global democratic processes.
What’s in Worldcoin’s way? The tech may face some adoption hurdles. The foremost of these is convincing the global population to book 'Orb' appointments to have their eyes scanned by hardware some feel is reminiscent of an Orwellian fever dream. As pointed out by Bankless host David Hoffman: “The physical nature of the Orb that you place your eye into has these strong dystopian connotations that have triggered so many people.”
So, why scan eyes? Co-founder Alex Blania explains this in his interview with Hoffman. To distribute a token to all humanity, it's necessary to solve civil resistance. To put it simply, civil resistance solutions are like nightclub bouncers. In the context of Worldcoin, the ‘bouncer’ is the iris scanning mechanism that prevents bad actors from creating countless fake accounts to exploit the system — like someone trying to get into a nightclub with multiple fake IDs to get free drinks or cause trouble.
The window to the soul? The Worldcoin team tried a bunch of methods for solving civil resistance. The human iris proved to be the most robust and globally inclusive way to verify unique personhood with a cellphone camera — since there isn’t enough variation in our faces or fingerprints, and government-style KYC ID systems aren’t widely available outside the US and EU.
The experiment has begun: As of now, users worldwide can download the World App. In the USA, users can also schedule an appointment to visit their local Orb for an iris scan, which will activate their World ID. For those outside the US, you can download the World App and join the queue to await the arrival of an Orb in your city.
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