Worldcoin concerns: 'Evil product' warning and questions around WLD distribution

Not long after company Tools for Humanity launched Worldcoin (WLD), a token for the privacy-preserving digital identity project co-developed by Sam Altman, the co-founder and CEO of OpenAI, the platform behind artificial intelligence (AI) tool ChatGPT, concerns arose about the project.

Specifically, Cosine, the co-founder of the blockchain and decentralized finance (DeFi) security platform SlowMist, referred to Worldcoin as an “evil creation” should it succeed, although “it has a high probability of failure,” in a Twitter thread shared on July 24.

Staying vigilant

Moreover, while sharing a post by Vitalik Buterin, in which the Ethereum (ETH) co-founder discusses Worldcoin and ‘the Orb,’ its specialized biometrics hardware that scans each user’s iris, Cosine focused on one particular point, that “it’s important to exercise a lot of vigilance.”

According to him, many people think that the Orb hashes the iris and uses zero-knowledge to make a PoP (proof-of-personhood) with high privacy, which seems safe. However, from a hacker perspective, “even if all I have is the hash, I could potentially recreate your portrait. Don’t forget, what I aim to construct is the World ID, which will likely have a vast and diverse user base in the future.”

Worldcoin schematic. Source: Cos(余弦)

Furthermore, he added:

“What is the iris? It is one of the most stable and long-lasting unique identifiers of a person (unless you are blind). It is much more reliable than facial or fingerprint recognition. I have read the Worldcoin white paper, and the promises in it seem very appealing. However, we still need to remain cautious and vigilant when dealing with new things.”

Regulatory uncertainty?

At the same time, a pro-XRP legal expert known for his role in the legal standoff between the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and blockchain company Ripple, John E. Deaton, voiced his own concerns about the Worldcoin project.

Specifically, he shared a video of an interview with the project’s co-founders Altman and Alex Blania, in which the latter refused to discuss the distribution of Worldcoin “because of the regulatory uncertainty” in the US, stating that this was a “signal to RUN AWAY as fast as you can” from Worldcoin.

“Is he saying he can’t tell you how to acquire it or what you’re acquiring because he might get sued? Now that I think of it, is he being smart and just following legal advice, or is he a moron.”

On the other hand, according to Deaton, “this is an example of the chaos caused when you have bad faith regulators like [the SEC chief] Gary Gensler intentionally keeping the regulatory environment as unknowable,” with which several commenters agreed.

Meanwhile, the WLD token has started to trend sideways following the initial massive demand and price increase and is presently trading at the price of $2.0273, which suggests a decline of 20.51% on the day, according to the latest data seen by Finbold on July 25.

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