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Worldcoin
- md8 5y agoPrivacy by Design! - We use biometric identification to ensure a fair launch. So collecting fingerprints and iris scans, Privacy by Design?
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- sfe22 5y agoI also had a similar coin/currency idea to share with every human equally, but could not come with a good plan to distribute it, besides after carefully thinking this would not be truly necessary, because if people are free, productive ones will quickly make money, even if they start with zero. A bigger problem might be land and other world resources that are not currently being equally distributed.
- __alexs 5y agoJust let people mint it from thin air but make sure all minting is traceable on the block chain. This will obviously create immense inflation, but since everyone is capable of just inflating their own holdings to match it's perfectly fair and the relative value of individual holdings should stay fairly constant. How you actually price goods using this currency is left as an exercise for the reader.
- walrus01 5y ago> ensuring that every person on Earth can prove that they are indeed human >To address it, we built a new device called the Orb. It solves the problem through biometrics: the Orb captures an image of a person’s eyes I'm sure absolutely nothing can go wrong with this at all. Wow. I hope this is satire. Imagine what a major nation state intelligence agency could do with a data set of globally-unique eyeball vein pattern images of billions of persons.
- paisawalla 5y agoIt seems to me that there are some not-uncommon diseases that could affect this, e.g. if someone develops macular degeneration, do they lose their savings? Or can they double their coin share? What is the state of the science behind retinal-imaging-as-authentication? Are these patterns truly known to be stable over the course of a person's life?
- kybernetikos 5y ago> if someone develops macular degeneration, do they lose their savings The irishash is used to get an initial airdrop, not to access funds/make transactions later. But since equality seems a key principle, I am wondering how they'll deal with people without eyes.
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- have_faith 5y agoI'm assuming they don't store the images in the same way we don't store plain text passwords.
- lifeformed 5y agoWell, they claim not to save the images, just a hash.
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- chaostheory 5y agoThe main reason more people aren’t using crypto is because transactions are slow and expensive. This doesn’t solve either of those problems.
- hereme888 5y agoThis is ridiculous.
- Etheryte 5y ago> We are only a few months away from a global launch and we are running field tests in many locations around the world. In these field tests, people are waiting hours to receive their free share of Worldcoin [...]. Using dark patterns like artificially limiting supply before the product is even released to create an illusion of demand pretty much says everything you need to know about this. There are no interesting new concepts here, except that in addition to being yet another bogus coin, you're also expected to give up your biometric data.
- Cthulhu_ 5y agoYup, already providing artificial scarcity and FOMO in case it becomes the next Big Thing that goes up tens of thousands of % in fiat money value.
- TigeriusKirk 5y agoWhat's artificial about the supply limit?
- nynx 5y agoWhat sci-fi book is this from?
- asjdflakjsdf 5y agoThe idea of a fairly distributed world coin is fascinating, and something I would absolutely love to see. Unfortunately, from reading that webpage, I don't think "Worldcoin" sounds like a very promising application of the concept.
- 99112000 5y agoI am definitely hacking this. Thanks
- seibelj 5y agoWow it looks like YC / HackerNews is going all in on cryptocurrency! Congrats YC team! For readers - a Senior Blockchain Engineer position is available! https://worldcoin.org/job/4001608004 https://worldcoin.org/job/4001608004 HNers - apply now!
- beaconstudios 5y agolooks like YC is going all in on cryptocurrency; the degeneration from innovation to rent-seeking has begun.
- deft 5y agoImplying it was ever any different. Some of the scams Sam Altman has been involved with are worse than this.
- beaconstudios 5y agoCould you elaborate? The only things I'm aware of Altman specifically being involved with are Loopt, OpenAI and running YC after PG stepped back.
- TigeriusKirk 5y agoThe comments here are overwhelmingly negative and the article has been flag-killed.
- f38zf5vdt 5y agoBroken link for me, but you can see the original page here. https://web.archive.org/web/20211021151209/https://worldcoin.org/ https://web.archive.org/web/20211021151209/https://worldcoin...
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- kfprt 5y ago> Launching a new global currency by giving a share of it to every human on earth A share of nothing is still nothing.
- have_faith 5y agoPrice of eyes on the black market skyrockets, coroners and morticians start driving around in lambos.
- jnsaff2 5y ago"If only you could see what I have seen with your eyes"
- __alexs 5y agoWhat if you don't have eyes?
- rvz 5y agoFree coins for scanning your face on a blockchain and it will be there forever? Absolutely no thanks and no deal. This is a definitive edition ponzi scam.
- rokobobo 5y agoI don’t even think this is satire. This feels like the kind of made up stories that children come up with (and place themselves at the center of).
- pikwip 5y agoIs there any evidence that a user can't get a new wallet for every pair of novelty contact lenses they buy?
- ThePhysicist 5y agoSo, my understanding of the current play in this space is as follows: - Create a large number of worthless cryptographic tokens. - Distribute around half of them as "freebies". - Keep the other half to yourself / distribute them among your investors. - Start a hype by injecting your investors money into your currency. - Hope that people will start to trade/speculate with your currency, buying it for real monies. - As the trading volume ramps up, start extracting money from the system by exchanging your tokens for real monies. - Profit! Is this about right? I mean it's quite ingenious as you seem to create money out of thin air, but I really can't wrap my head around how this isn't outlawed as an MLM scheme by governments.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- jcpham2 5y agoSpot on! Tether on Garth!
- nikanj 5y agoGovernments ultimately execute the wishes and wants of citizens at large, and voters have collectively given a resounding yea to get-rich-fast crypto lotteries.
- vorpalhex 5y agoVoters also like safety and not losing their entire net worth because they published a private key or got scammed.
- lijogdfljk 5y agoWhere? In some parts of the world, ahem, it sounds like that would infringe on our "freedoms".
- vorpalhex 5y agoName a functioning country that doesn't have chargebacks, small claims or commerce law.
- mediocregopher 5y agoA similar project here: https://www.proofofhumanity.id/ https://www.proofofhumanity.id/ They don't solve the proof-of-humanness problem via biometrics, it's more of a web-of-trust kind of thing. Probably also broken as hell, but this is a hard problem being solved in new ways so that's expected.
- bla15e 5y agoAbsolutely horrifying, just in time for Halloween
- lifeformed 5y agoCould you fake multiple identities with eye modifications?
- luckystarr 5y agoNice. This means I can create as many accounts as I dare, right? I just need to create fingerprints that are used for identifying an "eye".
- beecafe 5y agoWhat stops an Orb Operator from just opening up the Orb and publishing random hashes? Assuming that "privacy is preserved" and the hash can't be turned back into an iris, there should be no way to tell.
- vorpalhex 5y agoSounds like it would be very profitable to be an Orb operator and have basic reverse engineering skills.
- hnechochamber 5y agodont worry folks im here to save the world with my crypto currency.
- squidproquo 5y agoI think the overarching idea here makes sense, but the devil is in the details. 1) It's going to be difficult to ensure that the 'Orb' device can't be hacked and allow bad actors to send a bunch of random codes to signup for a Worldcoin. 2) If there are bogus signups how do you deal with reconciliation when there are ID collisions? 3) It's going to take many years for this to get a critical traction and to deploy coins to individuals. 4) The value of this coin will be extremely small when it's divided amongst the world's population. Assuming it's spent shortly after it is received, this money will just flow back to the owner's of capital anyways.
- esnard 5y agoTheir "how it works" page has a whole section dedicated to your first question: > Spoofing attacks involve presenting the Orb with modified, fake, or non-human irises. For example, an attacker might show the Orb a photo of an iris or an animal iris, hoping to generate a unique IrisHash. To defend against attacks like this, we’ve equipped the Orb with a suite of multi-spectral sensors and custom fraud-detection algorithms. This advanced anti-spoofing system complements the iris imaging system, and operates locally on each device. > The Orb is also resilient to various forms of tampering, including attempts to modify its software, extract its cryptographic secrets, or disable its anti-spoofing system. This resilience is critical, since any of these intrusions might allow a hacker to generate fraudulent IrisHashes. The Orb’s embedded systems reliably detect advanced attacks of this kind, and prevent corresponding fraud. > To further increase the difficulty of an attack, Orbs will be remotely monitored and compared to other Orbs. Such monitoring is based on non-biometric metadata from the Orb, including battery level, temperature, and network strength. Anomalies will be flagged and lead to Orbs being deactivated. This anomaly detection happens in a controlled environment in the cloud and therefore comes with higher security guarantees than device-level spoof and tamper detection.
- thebean11 5y ago> The Orb is also resilient to various forms of tampering, including attempts to modify its software, extract its cryptographic secrets, or disable its anti-spoofing system. This resilience is critical, since any of these intrusions might allow a hacker to generate fraudulent IrisHashes. The Orb’s embedded systems reliably detect advanced attacks of this kind, and prevent corresponding fraud. Doubt. In the end this is a device collecting signals, signing them cryptographically, and sending them to the cloud. If there's an economic incentive someone will find a way to get it to sign fake signals. There's also the centralization issue, where the manufacturer of these orbs essentially has total control over producing the currency.
- sodimel 5y agoThis home page have a score of 29 bullshit[0], nice one! [0]: Bullshit.js − https://mourner.github.io/bullshit.js/ https://mourner.github.io/bullshit.js/
- epa 5y ago"Nothing like this has ever been done before" See bitcoin
- jagger27 5y ago> Help us give Worldcoin to over a billion people. Get rewarded for every user you sign up. Come on guys.
- w-m 5y agoStart working on a way to print uniquely patterned contact lenses now, to be ready at launch. Even thisisnotaniris.com is still up for grabs, have fun with your infinite number of tokens!
- lvl100 5y agoImagine you sitting on incredible wealth by just being in SV over the past two decades. And then you come up with this garbage.
- everlost 5y agoInteresting project, but many open questions: 1. Are the coins allocated to each user lumpsum, or on a fixed schedule? 2. How can privacy be protected when converting coins into fiat currency? 3. Why would anyone trade these coins, when they can simply get their own freshly issued? 3. How can the coins have any value when nobody trades them?
- mcgingras 5y agoThe thing about these "drops" is people will liquidate them into real currency as quickly as possible. If the goal is to distribute a currency to as many people as possible (so everyone has a piece of the currency to use) then you have to remove any possible off ramps. But, then you run into the problem of nobody _actually_ being interested in the coin since it has "no real value" (can't trade it for USD)
- esnard 5y agoHow does the Orb handle people who lost their eyes?
- 0xBA5ED 5y agoLet me guess: Nobody has access to the data because it is encrypted from literally everyone so there will never be any conflicts of interest ever, right?
- TigeriusKirk 5y agoThe vision here is a first step toward a global UBI. If you're going to give everyone an income, you first need to know that each account is a real person. That's essential. So this is a way to get there. I'm sure it will have glitches and hitches. That's fine, this is how you work it all out, by taking practical real-world actions. The vision here is huge. Ultimately a complete transition of the global economy. Will it get there? No idea. But I'm very, very excited to see someone working on it.
- yownie 5y agoNope!Nope!Nope!........................Nope!Nope!Nope!Nope!Nope!Nope!Nope!Nope!Nope!Nope!Nope!Nope!Nope!Nope!Nope!Nope!Nope!
- xx511134bz 5y agoI wonder if eye-scanning hashes can handle Lasik / PRK
- kangnkodos 5y agoThere have been studies which start with giving everyone the same amount of money, and then simulating random transactions. In a very short amount of time, one person ends up with 95% of the money. When it is run different times, a different random person ends up being the one rich person. But it never ends up with everyone having about the same amount of money.
- leppr 5y agoSorry for the meta post, but it's quite funny how HN's legendary skepticism towards cryptocurrency manages to get even Sam Altman's project flagged on his own (former) board.
- 908087 5y agoI sincerely hate everything about the direction the tech industry is taking society in, and it makes me feel like it may be time to stop being a part of that industry even after giving the last 35 years of my life to it.
- neilk 5y ago1. Why the orb? So they say it’s about UBI, but… what’s wrong with the ways we establish human-ness now? Usually it’s a combination of national ids, photo ids (also a kind of biometric) and respected persons like doctors or licensed engineers attesting you exist. No one method is dominant, which has its privacy benefits. The eyeball scan, plus the cryptoasset incentive, seems like a strategy that could place this company as a very dominant broker of human-ness. Regardless of whether WorldCoin becomes a useful financial token. 2. What’s even good about the Orb versus something more boring So the orb bootstraps a user into having a private key. So I have all the same privacy difficulties of managing my own key, don’t I? It’s not like I can pay for things with my eyeball. So if we have special licensed operators, with controlled hardware, why not generate a key randomly with that hardware? Presumably they have provisions for transitioning you to new keys when your iris changes, so… if that is done by a controlled hardware and a licensed orb franchise, why not just use regular national or photo ID methods, sign that data with the Orb-station’s private key, and we’re done?
- npv789 5y agoshitcoin