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Worldcoin issues tokens to people for scanning their retinas. Their magical orb device sends a biometric hash to their network. Here's my take on it: You can p

Worldcoin issues tokens to people for scanning their retinas. Their magical orb device sends a biometric hash to their network. Here's my take on it: You can possibly replace their biometric device with a random hash generator. * If it works, it means the currency is not fairly distributed, but anyone sending valid hashes to their network is issued tokens, irrespective of whether the eyeballs described by those hashes exist. This is called a Sybil attack. * If it doesn't work, it means there is some secret or centralized check that the network performs, which means the currency is not open. This is why we still use proof-of-work in spite of its energy expense: it is simple to understand, it can not be faked, and it can be openly verified. So, do not support this biometric-gathering enterprise.

Yetino 5y ago
The first half of your argument makes sense. Justifying the use of proof-of-work appears to be a fallacy of relevance though
- bsedlm 5y ago
  I consider the energy expense exactly the reason (and the cost) of the decentralized trust afforded by PoW. How is it irrelevant?
  - idorosen 5y ago
    Proof of work, it’s inefficiency, or it’s security implications on transactions more generally are not relevant to your comments on the vulnerability of their coin faucet or the veracity of their claims.
    - ericmay 5y ago
      They related these two points by saying that either it’s hackable, or there’s something weird going on under the hood, and that proof of stake alleviates these issues. Idk if I agree or disagree but it seemed straightforward and relevant what they were asserting.
      - idorosen 5y ago
        There were three concepts being conflated in the comment I originally replied to: Sybil attacks, double spending prevention mechanisms like Proof of Work and Proof of Stake, and exactly-once delivery to members of a group (i.e. what a coin faucet does and the creepy biometric privacy destroying Orb thing TFA reacts to). TFA discusses an identification problem, and how this particular solution is creepy and privacy-destroying. A Sybil attack is a single or a small number of entities counterfeiting multiple peer identities so as to compromise a disproportionate share of the system. The actual network of communicating nodes that have copies of the distributed ledger (whether they be participant wallets, miners, validators, stakers, or any other kind of node), and the append-only list or tree of wallet-to-wallet transactions (i.e. the distributed ledger) are distinct, and may be what's tripping up some. Within that distributed ledger, proof of work or proof of stake aren't what prevents the Sybils from using your (or others') identities on a cryptocurrency's network without your private key. Transaction signatures alone are the mechanism that prevents impersonation. Sybils can flood a cryptocurrency network with transactions with fake signatures all they want, but the transactions would be invalidated the moment that any node appending to the distributed ledger attempts to verify those transactions against its copy of the blockchain or ledger. In Bitcoin's case, the wallet address is the public key for that wallet, and the transaction signature is easily verified by using the source wallet (the one that has a balance) address as the public key for signature verification. (The wallet address is a hash of the public key, and I'm oversimplifying.) The function of Proof of Work is to mitigate double spending by the same identity, which is a different concept from a Sybil attack, and is not even a type of Sybil attack. That double spending would otherwise "fork" the distributed ledger, and cause two different parallel versions of the distributed ledger to exist - one in which the destination wallet A has the transacted coin, and another in which the destination wallet B has the transacted coin. The iterated game miners play in PoW makes it computationally infeasible for a single party to double spend without controlling more than 50% of mining (e.g. hashing) power in the communications network of participating nodes. In the case of Bitcoin, for example, spending the same Bitcoin wallet balance twice by signing two different transactions using the same wallet private key. That is not a Sybil attack because the double spend (i.e. both transactions) originate from the same wallet. Double spending by a single identity is irrelevant to TFA, and not what TFA is talking about. TFA responds to a coin faucet proposal (Worldcoin's "Orb" mechanism) that uses a biometric challenge to verify that coins are distributed to flesh and blood humans only, and exactly once. They're mitigating an identity problem with coin faucets, not an integrity or double spending problem that Proof of Work mitigates. (And in a creepy, biometric privacy destroying way, we'll get to that later.) Coin faucets can be used to give some value (e.g. a small amount of cryptocurrency) to as large a population as possible to enable, for example, developers to play around with the cryptocurrency and new users to try it out before buying in with their own money. The referenced coin faucet is proposed as a wealth (re?)distribution mechanism. Currently, coin faucets mitigate a single or small number of individuals from consuming all of their cryptocurrency by restricting IP addresses, browser cookies, wallet addresses, and other forms of identification. The "Worldcoin Orb" hardware device for that identification collects biometric information (i.e. facial recognition, eye recognition, etc.) centrally to ensure that only flesh and blood humans receive the initial grant of their cryptocurrency. One of the comments here previously mentioned that you might be able to just spoof the output phashes of these "Orb" devices to perform a Sybil attack on the coin faucet in TFA that uses biometric phashes. Hopefully this helps explain why this type of Sybil attack is distinct from attacks on the proof of work or proof of stake mechanisms, such as owning 51% of the mining power on a POW network or all the validators on a POS network. As an aside: An encoded, encrypted, or hashed version of your biometrics that can be used to identify you from those biometrics is still biometrics. As long as it is generated from the source material, and uniquely identifies an individual, it's still biometrics, and still creepy facial recognition, IMO.
- danuker 5y ago
  Proof-of-work was created precisely to prevent a Sybil attack, but while allowing an open network (i.e. not having to buy the token from the creators). You need a form of scarcity to prevent a Sybil attack. Solved cryptographic puzzles of an adjustable difficulty is one such form of scarcity. Does this address your concern about relevance?
deleted 5y ago
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exo762 5y ago
While I don't care about Worldcoin (I think it will fail, because they are solving the problem that does not exist), this post is false in multiple ways. First, retina scanning output hash is deterministic - it is supposed to generate the same result for the same eyeball. So it can't be replaced with random number generation. Second, network does not interpret hashes, except for making sure that single hash is awarded funds only ones. Network however pays attention to whom is sending the hashes. It must be "legitimate" Orb units, likely considered to be legitimate because their public keys were whitelisted. Third, process of distribution of initial tokens is obviously NOT OPEN. You need a "legitimate" Orb unit to participate. Which has nothing to do with how the network will behave for users already on-boarded. Fourth, PoW has nothing to do with it. PoW is antisybil for people who might add new blocks. PoW has nothing to do with people who just want to transfer or hold funds. Or even with people who can create money according to network rules.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- drexlspivey 5y ago
  > First, retina scanning output hash is deterministic - it is supposed to generate the same result for the same eyeball. So it can't be replaced with random number generation. His argument is valid, what stops you from replacing the retina scan with a random hash replicating a different person scanning each time and collecting new tokens? What ties the hash to the actual retina other than the device that you can mess with?
  - Tenoke 5y ago
    Presumably the orbs produce a verifiable type of hash. E.g. whatever output it has is also encrypted with their private key + some salt and you can always check if what a user provides has that.
    - New_California 5y ago
      You don't understand what a hash is.
jbverschoor 5y ago
No you can't. The whole point is to every everybody have only 1 entry / key. The concept is simple: give everybody an equal amount of coins. You need a unique identifier / derivative of it
- danuker 5y ago
  > You need a unique identifier / derivative of it What prevents anyone from mass-generating unique identifiers?
  - jbverschoor 5y ago
    Same is true for all private keys
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
  - meragrin_ 5y ago
    How would you mass-generate unique identifiers?
    - dmitriid 5y ago
      for(;;) new GUID();
      - meragrin_ 5y ago
        How does that introduce them into the network? Is that even the format of the identifiers they use?
        dmitriid 5y ago
        As for the network, it's as easy. It creates a hash of a retina on a single device with no further confirmation or verification. So al this comes down to several rather simple steps: - if the algorithm for the hash is known, generate new hashes programmatically - if not, but the hash is simple, reverse engineer/brute force the hash, generate new hashes programmatically - if not, generate synthetic retina images and feed them to the algorithm --- cut off point, and a really don't think you would need anything beyond this point for a shitty cryptocoin like worldcoin --- - if the algorithm can differentiate between flat images and "actual" retinas, for some definition of "actual", iterate through artificial eyes until they trigger the required response
New_California 5y ago
Correct but efficacy of this process is pretty much irrelevant for the founders because the whole "fair distribution" is just a marketing gimmick to promote yet another shitcoin. Only losers will provide their real retinas. Smart players will obviously game the system and then dump the shitcoin on yet another group of losers.
- LurkingPenguin 5y ago
  Wait until you see the retina mining camps they set up in China.
  - rolandog 5y ago
    Or... What if you had an AI randomly generate unique irises, you then print them on adhesive paper, and paste the cut-outs on the eyes of one of those robo-faces? Unlimited money!
    - LurkingPenguin 5y ago
      Where's the fun in that though?
    - arianvanp 5y ago
      https://youtu.be/7FYb1gwi-30 https://youtu.be/7FYb1gwi-30 seems relevant :)
    - drdrey 5y ago
      They allegedly do liveness checks with an IR sensor to make sure they are scanning a live eye
      - tablespoon 5y ago
        > They allegedly do liveness checks with an IR sensor to make sure they are scanning a live eye If you control one of their devices, you could always just modify it fake a live input. Even if they intend to control the scanners themselves, corruption can probably thwart that. This comment (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29001214 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29001214) makes it sounds like they may be operating in countries with endemic corruption.
tromp 5y ago
I wouldn't call the coin distribution fair if the creators can allocate arbitrary amounts to themselves, which the Worldcoin creators appear able to do. Then again, even PoW coins with no premine can be unfair if most of the long-term supply gets distributed in just the first few years, leaving only crumbs for late adopters.
- EMM_386 5y ago
  > I wouldn't call the coin distribution fair if the creators can allocate arbitrary amounts to themselves, which the Worldcoin creators appear able to do. I'm certainly not defending any of this … however, it should be noted that "creators can allocate arbitrary amounts to themselves" is a typical thing even in regulated markets. Notice how Trump's new social media became a public company through a SPAC? The man behind that move has two degrees from MIT. If you want to go down that rabbit hole, go for it. But people become very wealthy, very fast, via allocating "arbitrary amounts to themselves" even in regulated markets. Financial shenanigans. If you haven't heard of the $100 million deli in New Jersey, feel free to Google that one.
  - djbusby 5y ago
    This one: https://www.complex.com/life/new-jersey-deli-valued-at-100-million-is-shell-company https://www.complex.com/life/new-jersey-deli-valued-at-100-m...
    - EMM_386 5y ago
      That's the one. Why I'm at -1 at the moment for that comment is beyond me. It could be because I am commenting on a site where VCs play similar games. I only deal with facts.
- gruez 5y ago
  >Then again, even PoW coins with no premine can be unfair [...] It's "fair" if you're referring to equal opportunity, not equal outcomes.
54b4b54 5y ago
TY for the explainer. To make sure I understand, it sounds like a Sybil attack can exploit a hash function because ultimately, what is being hashed does not matter and to verify what is being hashed requires centralization.
- mempko 5y ago
  Not necessarily. Maybe the scanners have a key that only it's creators can derive from some master key. The hash could come signed and all the public verification has to do is match against a public key. You don't need a database of hashes and you don't need a centralized db of source scans. Each scan hash could even chain with a previous scan hash and you can limit the number of times a key is good for, hence limiting number of scans a device can have. Only way to fake this would be to have the master key.
  - teraflop 5y ago
    Which, as always, raises the question of why a blockchain is necessary. If the creators' master key can be trusted with the power to decide who gets new coins, why don't the creators just store everyone's account balance in a database, and get rid of the enormous performance and energy costs of a distributed ledger?
    - mempko 5y ago
      Exactly!
    - _jal 5y ago
      > raises the question of why a blockchain is necessary For marketing, of course. Blockchains are magic, the rubes won't flock otherwise.
    - tlrobinson 5y ago
      I don't know anything about Worldcoin specifically, but you could argue a case for an initial period of semi-centralized "fair" distribution, after which the protocol would (verifiably) cease to allow minting of new coins.
mempko 5y ago
I'm not here to support worldcoin because I think it's a bad idea. However, proof-of-work is also a bad idea. What bitcoin is is a decentralized clock rewarding random machines every tick. It produces bad dynamics. Parento distribution of reward, huge amount of energy waste. All so rich people (Yes, most bitcoin is held by a few rich people) can transfer wealth. It's a stupid idea. You can appreciate it's simplicity and how everything fits together like puzzle pieces, but it is ultimately a stupid idea because it lives in the real world and has predictable real world consequences.
- fleddr 5y ago
  It's not a stupid idea. It's the invention of digital scarcity. It is supposed to be real world costly. High energy use in itself is not the issue, it's CO2 emissions. Energy can be locally abundant, renewable, yet remote, hard to transport to civilization. That would be an idealistic example of sustainable mining. Bitcoin mining isn't fully at that level of sustainability yet, but it's a solvable problem. Bitcoin isn't for rich people. It's for all people. It's highly popular in deeply inflationary regimes, amidst refugees and particular immigrants. The fastest growth in Bitcoin addresses for years has come from the African continent.
  - chriswarbo 5y ago
    > Bitcoin mining isn't fully at that level of sustainability yet, but it's a solvable problem. No it's not. These sorts of arguments fundamentally misunderstand the Sisyphean design of Bitcoin's proof-of-work algorithm: difficulty is scaled to absorb any changes in hash power, and expending hash power is rewarded with a chance of minting coins and/or collecting fees. Bitcoin could be made sustainable and clean today, with no extra infrastructure, no optimised hardware, no new solar panel breakthrough, etc.: miners simply have to turn off their equipment, then difficulty will adjust downwards, and Bitcoin would become efficient enough to run off a solar-powered RaspberryPi. That won't happen; and for exactly the same reason miners won't stop burning cheap fossil fuels as well as diverting as much renewable power as they can away from useful projects like electrified transport, desalination, aluminium smelting, HVAC, etc.
helen___keller 5y ago
> If it doesn't work, it means there is some secret or centralized check that the network performs, which means the currency is not open. I could be wrong, but isn't this because distribution of 'free' worldcoin is centralized? Meaning you can create identities on the network that may or may not be tied to a real person's eyeballs, but that identity only gets free Worldcoin if scanned by lets say an Approved™ Orb scanner operated by an Approved™ Orb operator, who is (presumably) verifying that the orb is scanning real humans only. This is basically Yet Another Shitcoin With Airdrop, but with some effort to try and control 1 human adopter = 1 free coin in the airdrop. Regardless, that doesn't imply that the network is centralized / controlled, just the distribution of the initial 8 billion worldcoins is (philosophically, you might say that the centralization of the initial distribution of coins means that the network is effectively not decentralized, but presumably the network is running similar code as any other blockchain).
Glyptodon 5y ago
I bet the people who around with the orbs will get the iris hashes they collect as a downline and the whole thing will just be a new permutation of crypto MLM.
cabalamat 5y ago
> So, do not support this biometric-gathering enterprise. I wonder if the NSA is one of their investors?
matheusmoreira 5y ago
Proof-of-work is also the only way to preserve decentralization. One CPU, one vote. Everyone can and should participate. Bitcoin failed at this because the hashing algorithm can be accelerated by specialized hardware, leading to professional miners setting up large centralized operations and taking over the network.
- jl6 5y ago
  "One CPU, one vote" doesn't imply decentralization either - if you have lots of money, just buy lots of CPUs.
  - matheusmoreira 5y ago
    Sure, but that doesn't give you the disproportional advantage bitcoin miners get with their specialized hardware. With two CPUs you get two votes. Bitcoin miners get god knows how many.
    - javert 5y ago
      Like the other guy said, it doesn't matter. It's always spend $X to get Y% of the network. That's just how reality is. By the way, bitcoin miners do not vote. It's not a democracy. Proof of work is not voting. That's important. Democracy would be a terrible system for governing money. Bitcoin is not a democracy. (Some of the proof of stake coins are, and that's bad.)
    - anonporridge 5y ago
      It really doesn't matter to the game theory of the system. If bitcoin somehow managed to create a system in which general CPUs were the only thing that can be used to mine, it would just mean that we'd have CPU shortages as the people with wealth and power would buy them all up. Or at least, they'd buy up all the best ones and the plebs would get the low clock speed units that can only hash at a fraction of the rate. The "one CPU, one vote" idea sounds nice to those of us with democratic ideals believing all humans should have an equal vote, but it just fundamentally doesn't work in practice.
olalonde 5y ago
I feel like many cryptocurrencies are attempting to achieve a metaphorical perpetual motion machine. The cryptocurrency world desperately needs its equivalent of the laws of thermodynamics / CAP theorem to help debunk dubious claims and prevent people from wasting efforts on futile endeavors.
mgraczyk 5y ago
No need to speculate, it's the second one and they even describe it on their web site: 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 the cloud and therefore comes with higher security guarantees than device-level spoof and tamper detection. What you're mistaken about is that the "currency" is not the same as this biometric airdrop (initial distribution). The airdrop is not open at all. The currency itself, once distributed, is just a token on Ethereum (with optimistic rollups). It's essentially as open as any other Ethereum token.
deleted 5y ago
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Yetino 5y ago

The first half of your argument makes sense. Justifying the use of proof-of-work appears to be a fallacy of relevance though

bsedlm 5y ago
I consider the energy expense exactly the reason (and the cost) of the decentralized trust afforded by PoW. How is it irrelevant?
- idorosen 5y ago
  Proof of work, it’s inefficiency, or it’s security implications on transactions more generally are not relevant to your comments on the vulnerability of their coin faucet or the veracity of their claims.
  - ericmay 5y ago
    They related these two points by saying that either it’s hackable, or there’s something weird going on under the hood, and that proof of stake alleviates these issues. Idk if I agree or disagree but it seemed straightforward and relevant what they were asserting.
    - idorosen 5y ago
      There were three concepts being conflated in the comment I originally replied to: Sybil attacks, double spending prevention mechanisms like Proof of Work and Proof of Stake, and exactly-once delivery to members of a group (i.e. what a coin faucet does and the creepy biometric privacy destroying Orb thing TFA reacts to). TFA discusses an identification problem, and how this particular solution is creepy and privacy-destroying. A Sybil attack is a single or a small number of entities counterfeiting multiple peer identities so as to compromise a disproportionate share of the system. The actual network of communicating nodes that have copies of the distributed ledger (whether they be participant wallets, miners, validators, stakers, or any other kind of node), and the append-only list or tree of wallet-to-wallet transactions (i.e. the distributed ledger) are distinct, and may be what's tripping up some. Within that distributed ledger, proof of work or proof of stake aren't what prevents the Sybils from using your (or others') identities on a cryptocurrency's network without your private key. Transaction signatures alone are the mechanism that prevents impersonation. Sybils can flood a cryptocurrency network with transactions with fake signatures all they want, but the transactions would be invalidated the moment that any node appending to the distributed ledger attempts to verify those transactions against its copy of the blockchain or ledger. In Bitcoin's case, the wallet address is the public key for that wallet, and the transaction signature is easily verified by using the source wallet (the one that has a balance) address as the public key for signature verification. (The wallet address is a hash of the public key, and I'm oversimplifying.) The function of Proof of Work is to mitigate double spending by the same identity, which is a different concept from a Sybil attack, and is not even a type of Sybil attack. That double spending would otherwise "fork" the distributed ledger, and cause two different parallel versions of the distributed ledger to exist - one in which the destination wallet A has the transacted coin, and another in which the destination wallet B has the transacted coin. The iterated game miners play in PoW makes it computationally infeasible for a single party to double spend without controlling more than 50% of mining (e.g. hashing) power in the communications network of participating nodes. In the case of Bitcoin, for example, spending the same Bitcoin wallet balance twice by signing two different transactions using the same wallet private key. That is not a Sybil attack because the double spend (i.e. both transactions) originate from the same wallet. Double spending by a single identity is irrelevant to TFA, and not what TFA is talking about. TFA responds to a coin faucet proposal (Worldcoin's "Orb" mechanism) that uses a biometric challenge to verify that coins are distributed to flesh and blood humans only, and exactly once. They're mitigating an identity problem with coin faucets, not an integrity or double spending problem that Proof of Work mitigates. (And in a creepy, biometric privacy destroying way, we'll get to that later.) Coin faucets can be used to give some value (e.g. a small amount of cryptocurrency) to as large a population as possible to enable, for example, developers to play around with the cryptocurrency and new users to try it out before buying in with their own money. The referenced coin faucet is proposed as a wealth (re?)distribution mechanism. Currently, coin faucets mitigate a single or small number of individuals from consuming all of their cryptocurrency by restricting IP addresses, browser cookies, wallet addresses, and other forms of identification. The "Worldcoin Orb" hardware device for that identification collects biometric information (i.e. facial recognition, eye recognition, etc.) centrally to ensure that only flesh and blood humans receive the initial grant of their cryptocurrency. One of the comments here previously mentioned that you might be able to just spoof the output phashes of these "Orb" devices to perform a Sybil attack on the coin faucet in TFA that uses biometric phashes. Hopefully this helps explain why this type of Sybil attack is distinct from attacks on the proof of work or proof of stake mechanisms, such as owning 51% of the mining power on a POW network or all the validators on a POS network. As an aside: An encoded, encrypted, or hashed version of your biometrics that can be used to identify you from those biometrics is still biometrics. As long as it is generated from the source material, and uniquely identifies an individual, it's still biometrics, and still creepy facial recognition, IMO.
danuker 5y ago
Proof-of-work was created precisely to prevent a Sybil attack, but while allowing an open network (i.e. not having to buy the token from the creators). You need a form of scarcity to prevent a Sybil attack. Solved cryptographic puzzles of an adjustable difficulty is one such form of scarcity. Does this address your concern about relevance?

deleted 5y ago

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exo762 5y ago

While I don't care about Worldcoin (I think it will fail, because they are solving the problem that does not exist), this post is false in multiple ways. First, retina scanning output hash is deterministic - it is supposed to generate the same result for the same eyeball. So it can't be replaced with random number generation. Second, network does not interpret hashes, except for making sure that single hash is awarded funds only ones. Network however pays attention to whom is sending the hashes. It must be "legitimate" Orb units, likely considered to be legitimate because their public keys were whitelisted. Third, process of distribution of initial tokens is obviously NOT OPEN. You need a "legitimate" Orb unit to participate. Which has nothing to do with how the network will behave for users already on-boarded. Fourth, PoW has nothing to do with it. PoW is antisybil for people who might add new blocks. PoW has nothing to do with people who just want to transfer or hold funds. Or even with people who can create money according to network rules.

deleted 5y ago
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drexlspivey 5y ago
> First, retina scanning output hash is deterministic - it is supposed to generate the same result for the same eyeball. So it can't be replaced with random number generation. His argument is valid, what stops you from replacing the retina scan with a random hash replicating a different person scanning each time and collecting new tokens? What ties the hash to the actual retina other than the device that you can mess with?
- Tenoke 5y ago
  Presumably the orbs produce a verifiable type of hash. E.g. whatever output it has is also encrypted with their private key + some salt and you can always check if what a user provides has that.
  - New_California 5y ago
    You don't understand what a hash is.

jbverschoor 5y ago

No you can't. The whole point is to every everybody have only 1 entry / key. The concept is simple: give everybody an equal amount of coins. You need a unique identifier / derivative of it

danuker 5y ago
> You need a unique identifier / derivative of it What prevents anyone from mass-generating unique identifiers?
- jbverschoor 5y ago
  Same is true for all private keys
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- meragrin_ 5y ago
  How would you mass-generate unique identifiers?
  - dmitriid 5y ago
    for(;;) new GUID();
    - meragrin_ 5y ago
      How does that introduce them into the network? Is that even the format of the identifiers they use?
      - dmitriid 5y ago
        As for the network, it's as easy. It creates a hash of a retina on a single device with no further confirmation or verification. So al this comes down to several rather simple steps: - if the algorithm for the hash is known, generate new hashes programmatically - if not, but the hash is simple, reverse engineer/brute force the hash, generate new hashes programmatically - if not, generate synthetic retina images and feed them to the algorithm --- cut off point, and a really don't think you would need anything beyond this point for a shitty cryptocoin like worldcoin --- - if the algorithm can differentiate between flat images and "actual" retinas, for some definition of "actual", iterate through artificial eyes until they trigger the required response

New_California 5y ago

Correct but efficacy of this process is pretty much irrelevant for the founders because the whole "fair distribution" is just a marketing gimmick to promote yet another shitcoin. Only losers will provide their real retinas. Smart players will obviously game the system and then dump the shitcoin on yet another group of losers.

LurkingPenguin 5y ago
Wait until you see the retina mining camps they set up in China.
- rolandog 5y ago
  Or... What if you had an AI randomly generate unique irises, you then print them on adhesive paper, and paste the cut-outs on the eyes of one of those robo-faces? Unlimited money!
  - LurkingPenguin 5y ago
    Where's the fun in that though?
  - arianvanp 5y ago
    https://youtu.be/7FYb1gwi-30 https://youtu.be/7FYb1gwi-30 seems relevant :)
  - drdrey 5y ago
    They allegedly do liveness checks with an IR sensor to make sure they are scanning a live eye
    - tablespoon 5y ago
      > They allegedly do liveness checks with an IR sensor to make sure they are scanning a live eye If you control one of their devices, you could always just modify it fake a live input. Even if they intend to control the scanners themselves, corruption can probably thwart that. This comment (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29001214 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29001214) makes it sounds like they may be operating in countries with endemic corruption.

tromp 5y ago

I wouldn't call the coin distribution fair if the creators can allocate arbitrary amounts to themselves, which the Worldcoin creators appear able to do. Then again, even PoW coins with no premine can be unfair if most of the long-term supply gets distributed in just the first few years, leaving only crumbs for late adopters.

EMM_386 5y ago
> I wouldn't call the coin distribution fair if the creators can allocate arbitrary amounts to themselves, which the Worldcoin creators appear able to do. I'm certainly not defending any of this … however, it should be noted that "creators can allocate arbitrary amounts to themselves" is a typical thing even in regulated markets. Notice how Trump's new social media became a public company through a SPAC? The man behind that move has two degrees from MIT. If you want to go down that rabbit hole, go for it. But people become very wealthy, very fast, via allocating "arbitrary amounts to themselves" even in regulated markets. Financial shenanigans. If you haven't heard of the $100 million deli in New Jersey, feel free to Google that one.
- djbusby 5y ago
  This one: https://www.complex.com/life/new-jersey-deli-valued-at-100-million-is-shell-company https://www.complex.com/life/new-jersey-deli-valued-at-100-m...
  - EMM_386 5y ago
    That's the one. Why I'm at -1 at the moment for that comment is beyond me. It could be because I am commenting on a site where VCs play similar games. I only deal with facts.
gruez 5y ago
>Then again, even PoW coins with no premine can be unfair [...] It's "fair" if you're referring to equal opportunity, not equal outcomes.

54b4b54 5y ago

TY for the explainer. To make sure I understand, it sounds like a Sybil attack can exploit a hash function because ultimately, what is being hashed does not matter and to verify what is being hashed requires centralization.

mempko 5y ago
Not necessarily. Maybe the scanners have a key that only it's creators can derive from some master key. The hash could come signed and all the public verification has to do is match against a public key. You don't need a database of hashes and you don't need a centralized db of source scans. Each scan hash could even chain with a previous scan hash and you can limit the number of times a key is good for, hence limiting number of scans a device can have. Only way to fake this would be to have the master key.
- teraflop 5y ago
  Which, as always, raises the question of why a blockchain is necessary. If the creators' master key can be trusted with the power to decide who gets new coins, why don't the creators just store everyone's account balance in a database, and get rid of the enormous performance and energy costs of a distributed ledger?
  - mempko 5y ago
    Exactly!
  - _jal 5y ago
    > raises the question of why a blockchain is necessary For marketing, of course. Blockchains are magic, the rubes won't flock otherwise.
  - tlrobinson 5y ago
    I don't know anything about Worldcoin specifically, but you could argue a case for an initial period of semi-centralized "fair" distribution, after which the protocol would (verifiably) cease to allow minting of new coins.

mempko 5y ago

I'm not here to support worldcoin because I think it's a bad idea. However, proof-of-work is also a bad idea. What bitcoin is is a decentralized clock rewarding random machines every tick. It produces bad dynamics. Parento distribution of reward, huge amount of energy waste. All so rich people (Yes, most bitcoin is held by a few rich people) can transfer wealth. It's a stupid idea. You can appreciate it's simplicity and how everything fits together like puzzle pieces, but it is ultimately a stupid idea because it lives in the real world and has predictable real world consequences.

fleddr 5y ago
It's not a stupid idea. It's the invention of digital scarcity. It is supposed to be real world costly. High energy use in itself is not the issue, it's CO2 emissions. Energy can be locally abundant, renewable, yet remote, hard to transport to civilization. That would be an idealistic example of sustainable mining. Bitcoin mining isn't fully at that level of sustainability yet, but it's a solvable problem. Bitcoin isn't for rich people. It's for all people. It's highly popular in deeply inflationary regimes, amidst refugees and particular immigrants. The fastest growth in Bitcoin addresses for years has come from the African continent.
- chriswarbo 5y ago
  > Bitcoin mining isn't fully at that level of sustainability yet, but it's a solvable problem. No it's not. These sorts of arguments fundamentally misunderstand the Sisyphean design of Bitcoin's proof-of-work algorithm: difficulty is scaled to absorb any changes in hash power, and expending hash power is rewarded with a chance of minting coins and/or collecting fees. Bitcoin could be made sustainable and clean today, with no extra infrastructure, no optimised hardware, no new solar panel breakthrough, etc.: miners simply have to turn off their equipment, then difficulty will adjust downwards, and Bitcoin would become efficient enough to run off a solar-powered RaspberryPi. That won't happen; and for exactly the same reason miners won't stop burning cheap fossil fuels as well as diverting as much renewable power as they can away from useful projects like electrified transport, desalination, aluminium smelting, HVAC, etc.

helen___keller 5y ago

> If it doesn't work, it means there is some secret or centralized check that the network performs, which means the currency is not open. I could be wrong, but isn't this because distribution of 'free' worldcoin is centralized? Meaning you can create identities on the network that may or may not be tied to a real person's eyeballs, but that identity only gets free Worldcoin if scanned by lets say an Approved™ Orb scanner operated by an Approved™ Orb operator, who is (presumably) verifying that the orb is scanning real humans only. This is basically Yet Another Shitcoin With Airdrop, but with some effort to try and control 1 human adopter = 1 free coin in the airdrop. Regardless, that doesn't imply that the network is centralized / controlled, just the distribution of the initial 8 billion worldcoins is (philosophically, you might say that the centralization of the initial distribution of coins means that the network is effectively not decentralized, but presumably the network is running similar code as any other blockchain).

Glyptodon 5y ago

I bet the people who around with the orbs will get the iris hashes they collect as a downline and the whole thing will just be a new permutation of crypto MLM.

cabalamat 5y ago

> So, do not support this biometric-gathering enterprise. I wonder if the NSA is one of their investors?

matheusmoreira 5y ago

Proof-of-work is also the only way to preserve decentralization. One CPU, one vote. Everyone can and should participate. Bitcoin failed at this because the hashing algorithm can be accelerated by specialized hardware, leading to professional miners setting up large centralized operations and taking over the network.

jl6 5y ago
"One CPU, one vote" doesn't imply decentralization either - if you have lots of money, just buy lots of CPUs.
- matheusmoreira 5y ago
  Sure, but that doesn't give you the disproportional advantage bitcoin miners get with their specialized hardware. With two CPUs you get two votes. Bitcoin miners get god knows how many.
  - javert 5y ago
    Like the other guy said, it doesn't matter. It's always spend $X to get Y% of the network. That's just how reality is. By the way, bitcoin miners do not vote. It's not a democracy. Proof of work is not voting. That's important. Democracy would be a terrible system for governing money. Bitcoin is not a democracy. (Some of the proof of stake coins are, and that's bad.)
  - anonporridge 5y ago
    It really doesn't matter to the game theory of the system. If bitcoin somehow managed to create a system in which general CPUs were the only thing that can be used to mine, it would just mean that we'd have CPU shortages as the people with wealth and power would buy them all up. Or at least, they'd buy up all the best ones and the plebs would get the low clock speed units that can only hash at a fraction of the rate. The "one CPU, one vote" idea sounds nice to those of us with democratic ideals believing all humans should have an equal vote, but it just fundamentally doesn't work in practice.

olalonde 5y ago

I feel like many cryptocurrencies are attempting to achieve a metaphorical perpetual motion machine. The cryptocurrency world desperately needs its equivalent of the laws of thermodynamics / CAP theorem to help debunk dubious claims and prevent people from wasting efforts on futile endeavors.

mgraczyk 5y ago

No need to speculate, it's the second one and they even describe it on their web site: 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 the cloud and therefore comes with higher security guarantees than device-level spoof and tamper detection. What you're mistaken about is that the "currency" is not the same as this biometric airdrop (initial distribution). The airdrop is not open at all. The currency itself, once distributed, is just a token on Ethereum (with optimistic rollups). It's essentially as open as any other Ethereum token.

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