Eye-Scanning Worldcoin (WLD) Project To Face Inquiry From UK Watchdog: Report

A crypto project co-founded by OpenAI’s Sam Altman will face an inquiry from a UK data watchdog.

According to a new Reuters report, Britain’s data regulator says it will examine Worldcoin (WLD), a crypto ID project that utilizes iris scanners to verify users’ identities.

“We note the launch of WorldCoin in the UK and will be making further inquiries.”

WLD leaped in price yesterday after being listed on several major exchanges, including Binance.

Worldcoin was founded three years ago by Sam Altman and Alex Blania. According to the project’s website, Worldcoin consists of a “privacy-preserving” World ID and a digital WLD token that is received by users “simply for being human.”

The project plans on deploying 1,500 of its iris-scanning Orbs to 35 cities worldwide this summer and fall to meet the “global demand for ID.”

WLD is worth $2.32 at time of writing, up 2.8% in the last 24 hours.

Yesterday, Ethereum (ETH) founder Vitalin Buterik expressed his concerns over privacy risks for the new crypto project.

Buterin has identified four major risks to Worldcoin, with privacy being the most prominent among them.

“The registry of iris scans may reveal information. At the very least, if someone else scans your iris, they can check it against the database to determine whether or not you have a World ID. Potentially, iris scans might reveal more information.”

According to Buterin, the second risk is accessibility, given that World IDs are likely not going to be reliably accessible to most people. The last two points are centralization and security risks, including the possibility that some kind of back door is added to the system for the Worldcoin Foundation to use for its own benefit.

“Centralization. The Orb is a hardware device, and we have no way to verify that it was constructed correctly and does not have backdoors. Hence, even if the software layer is perfect and fully decentralized, the Worldcoin Foundation still has the ability to insert a backdoor into the system, letting it create arbitrarily many fake human identities. Security. Users’ phones could be hacked, users could be coerced into scanning their irises while showing a public key that belongs to someone else, and there is the possibility of 3D-printing “fake people” that can pass the iris scan and get World IDs.”

According to Buterin, there are security risks to Worldcoin’s system that could apply to any “proof of personhood” projects.