TL；DR
On July 24, 2023, Worldcoin token economics was officially announced. At the same time, multiple exchanges such as Gate.io have also successfully launched Worldcoin (WLD).
Under the bombardment of multiple messages, Worldcoin, a project full of Cyberpunk flavor, ignited the whole crypto world.
WorldCoin - "Crazy Innovator"
WorldCoin is a cryptocurrency project founded by Sam Aitman in 2020, which aims to build a global, fair, and inclusive open-source financial protocol.
WorldCoin's vision is to create the world's largest and most fair Digital identity and digital currency system, which can achieve identity authentication by scanning the iris of millions of people.
WorldCoin consists of two main entities: the WorldCoin Foundation and Tools for Humanity, the actual development entities. The design of this project consists of three components: WorldID, WorldCoin, and a wallet (WorldAPP) that carries an identity ID and coin.
--WorldID: Digital identity based on privacy protection and Proof of Personality.
--WorldCoin: The first token to be distributed to people for free globally, planned to be distributed to 1 billion people.
--WorldAPP: A wallet for making payments, purchases, and transfers worldwide.
Through these three, users can interact with WorldCoin's tokens, other digital assets, and traditional currencies to complete payment, purchase, and transfer operations.
To rapidly expand its financial network, WorldCoin plans to airdrop its token to 1 billion people worldwide. However, the first step in achieving this goal is to prevent "witch attacks," where one person controls multiple addresses for profit taking (a common measure of coupon clippers). For this reason, WorldCoin chose a direct method, which is to verify the real person's identity directly.
To achieve this goal, WorldCoin has developed a biometric device called Orb, which verifies a person's uniqueness by scanning the iris and uses zero-knowledge proof to ensure security.
Orb+PoP=Everyone Governance?
Although iris scanning may sound like a privacy concern, according to Worldcoin, it has already taken this issue into account in its design.
Orb is a spherical hardware device developed by Tools For Humanity. It uses iris Biometrics technology to verify a person's humanity and uniqueness in a secure and privacy-preserving way.
Below the shell, the Orb consists of two hemispheres separated by a motherboard and powerful computing units for maximum local processing. Among them, the first half is dedicated to sealing optical systems, and the second half is dedicated to cooling systems and speakers. Its main imaging systems include a telephoto lens and 2D gimbal system, a global shutter camera sensor, and optical filters. Among them, a movable lens can increase the field of view by >2 orders of magnitude, and multiple neural networks control image capture. The customized telephoto lens uses coated glass to optimize image capture in the near-infrared spectrum. The integrated liquid lens can achieve millisecond-level automatic focusing, controlled by a neural network to optimize focus. The shutter sensor and pulse illumination are synchronized to avoid blurring.
Generally speaking, you can understand Orb as an iris-scanning instrument. After scanning the iris image of the human eye, the Orb device converts the iris data into a unique identifier called IrisHash, which is completed locally. This means that the original iris image will not be stored or uploaded. This unique identifier IrisHash is a short numerical code stored in a database to check if a person has already registered.
It means that Worldcoin does not require your identity or personal information, and Orb scanning only confirms that you are the only real person, without caring about who you are.
It is an important design decision, as Worldcoin can ensure everyone can register once while respecting user privacy.
Biometrics has matured, including face recognition, fingerprint recognition, DNA testing, etc., but Worldcoin chose iris mainly because of its uniqueness, fraud prevention, and performance. Iris is more difficult to forge than face and fingerprint, and considering that it is necessary to airdrop for 1 billion people, whether it is difficult for face recognition database comparison or DNA testing, iris performance is more advantageous.
One of the reasons that prevent the crypto industry from becoming the core of the global virtual economy is that the crypto world lacks a credit system and arbitration institutions, and the perpetrators can use multiple identities to cheat. This chaos has hindered the development of cryptocurrency. Therefore, to ensure that the crypto industry can develop into a global Web3 economy, it is necessary to ensure that everyone can obtain unique identity confirmation on the blockchain. This can reduce fraud and malicious behavior, increase trust, and is also why DID is often referred to as a high-quality track with a broad market prospect.
WorldCoin uses iris recognition to solve the problem of unique real identity authentication. By establishing a reliable Digital identity authentication system, it can reduce evil behavior, improve trust, and make the crypto market more inclusive and innovative.
In addition, WorldCoin is also committed to global governance and digital Group decision-making. Many Web3 projects adopt a token-based governance model, where each token has one vote. Although this model achieves decentralization and democratization to some extent, it may exclude some individuals and favor those with greater economic power. To address this issue, a reliable mechanism that can resist Sybil Attack is needed to simplify the implementation of autonomous governance models based on unique human identities.
WorldCoin's Proof of Personality (PoP) credential system is crucial. By utilizing PoP, WorldCoin achieved the goal of allowing people to truly govern the protocol and ensuring that everyone benefits from it. This mechanism emphasizes the principle of "one person, one vote," allowing everyone to participate equally in the decision-making process without being disturbed by duplicate identities.
Token Economics
According to the official white paper of Worldcoin, the initial supply limit of Worldcoin governance token WLD is 10 billion.
A. 75% of them will be allocated to the Worldcoin community, with the majority of tokens allocated to users and the remaining tokens allocated to ecosystem funds and network operations;
B. 9.8% allocated to the initial development team;
C. 13.5% to be allocated to Tools for Humanity investors;
D. The remaining 1.7% will be reserved for Tools for Humanity.
The maximum circulation supply at the launch of WLD is 143 million. Among them, 43 million WLDs will be allocated to users who have passed Orb validation in the project pre-launch stage, and 100 million WLDs will be loaned to market makers outside the United States.
Unique Operator Model
The operators of Worldcoin mainly carry out the implementation of the project on a global scale.
Worldcoin recruits operators from all over the world, requiring them to be legally registered enterprises locally, and explicitly stating in the terms that they will not provide services to residents living in other legally restricted countries such as the United States, which manifests Worldcoin's strict compliance requirements. After all, collecting biological information from local residents is very sensitive in any country.
After the enterprise applies to become an operator, the Worldcoin team will enter the review and interview process, including KYC authentication, compliance training, and operating regions. After providing a set of Orb equipment, they can start working.
The operator is mainly responsible for completing the science popularization and scanning work for local users. Whenever an operator successfully helps a user complete registration, they will receive a certain amount of Worldcoin as a reward. This is a universal incentive mechanism used to encourage operators to help more people register actively.
The total supply of Worldcoin is 10 billion, the vast majority of which will be provided to users and operators. To motivate early contributors, the number of tokens received by users and operators per registration will decrease over time.
How can users participate in Worldcoin?
Download the World App
Go to the official website of Worldcoin（ https://worldcoin.org/download-app). Download and install the World App, a necessary tool for participating in Worldcoin or World ID. Currently, the application is compatible with Android and iPhone devices.
Register a personal account
Users can register using a phone number.
After successful registration, users can also choose to switch to other countries or regions.
After registration is completed, you will see your World ID displayed in gray, indicating that it still needs to be validated. This means that you cannot use the World App yet and must perform iris authentication.
Perform Iris Authentication
After successfully registering, the user needs to continue validation in the World App and make an appointment for Orb iris authentication. You can find a nearby Worldcoin operator in the application for iris authentication. In the application, you can see nearby locations for selection, but it should be noted that you need to make an appointment in advance.
When making an appointment, it is unnecessary to fill in the real name, just provide information that allows the staff to confirm the identity of the person making the appointment.
The entire iris authentication process is very fast, taking only 10 seconds to complete. (Assisted by staff on site)
After completing iris authentication, your World ID will change from gray to black and display that you are ready to use the app's features.
Behind Authentication
The following chart illustrates the relevant processes and operations behind World App, Worldcoin, World ID, and Orb iris authentication.
Firstly, after the user downloads the World App, the application will randomly generate a Secret key.
Then, users need to find operators with Orb authentication qualifications. Orb authentication is carried out by real personnel who process data locally and sign, and the data related to iris images will be destroyed. The data processed by Orb will be uploaded after validation.
Worldcoin Authentication Rewards
According to official information from Worldcoin, users who complete Orb iris scanning authentication will receive 25 WLD tokens (currently priced at $2.46 per token) as their first (and one-time) reward. Afterward, users who register and authenticate will receive a reward of 1 WLD per week (which will decrease over time).
Where is the Future?
In terms of the project itself, Worldcoin is undoubtedly a rare hardcore project in the industry. Both its own software design and the technological capabilities contained in its hardware devices give it the ability to change existing modes to a certain extent.
But currently, the biggest issue facing it is still regulation.
*“On July 28, according to Reuters, the French privacy regulatory agency stated that it has launched an investigation into Worldcoin and is providing support for the relevant departments in Bavaria to investigate Worldcoin. It believes that there appear to be issues with the legality of Worldcoin's biometric data collection and storage.
On July 31, according to Reuters, Michael Will, the chairman of the German data regulatory agency, stated that due to the involvement of large-scale sensitive biometric data, the German data regulatory agency has been investigating the Worldcoin project since the end of last year. The new technology adopted by Worldcoin poses many risks, including whether users explicitly agree to process their highly sensitive biometric data based on "sufficient and clear" information.”*
It can be imagined that the 'struggle' between Worldcoin and regulatory agencies around the world may have just begun, and this is actually a microcosm of the prolonged tug-of-war between technology and ethics (I believe Sam Aitman, as the creator of Chat GPT, is no stranger to this). Therefore, how to balance technological development and regulation in the future may be the biggest proposition for Worldcoin.
WorldCoin - "Crazy Innovator"
Orb+PoP=Everyone Governance?
Token Economics
Unique Operator Model
How can users participate in Worldcoin?
Where is the Future?
Sign up to win $100 newcomer bonuses!
Register Now