11 ms·

Like any other non-coin crypto tech, Worldcoin doesn't do what it set out to do because it doesn't solve the oracle problem. If you trust their orb, it generate

Like any other non-coin crypto tech, Worldcoin doesn't do what it set out to do because it doesn't solve the oracle problem. If you trust their orb, it generates a wallet for you - but anyone, human or otherwise - can use that wallet. There's a black market in China for these identities already [1] and of course the response from Worldcoin was there's nothing they can do - because there's nothing they can do. So this is just any other coin with extra steps, and the extra layer of trusting Sam Altman with your eyeballs to generate secret keys? [1] https://www.coindesk.com/policy/2023/05/24/black-market-for-worldcoin-credentials-pops-up-in-china/ https://www.coindesk.com/policy/2023/05/24/black-market-for-...

meowface 3y ago
I understand your point, but why the separation of coin vs. non-coin tech? Meaning that the only real guarantee of cryptocurrency is prevention of double-spend rather than a confirmed unique identity?
- arcticbull 3y ago
  Blockchains can extend the guarantees of the blockchain only to concepts that can be completely represented on-chain, which basically meant just coins. They don't have to interface with the real world so aren't subject issues at the boundary. At least that's one way of looking at it. As soon as you start trying to represent things that actually exist in the real world authoritatively, it breaks down - because the authoritative representation is actually off chain, i.e reality. In this case your identity is the authoritative representation, not the key you present.
  - jsunderland323 3y ago
    This is really well said. I’ve been trying to articulate this point for a long time. I think the boundary is between things that are temporal or bounded by real time and space vs things that are time independent and state based. Oracles always suffer from this problem even if the authoritative representation is another digital thing. For example the whole NFT url swapping thing. Similarly this comes up in version control a lot when your code depends on things that are unversioned, the commit state may be idempotent but the application is not.
Waterluvian 3y ago
I often see in software dev this idea of solving a problem by just offloading the problem onto another team/customer. I guess crypto is fundamentally that. Trust, fraud, identity, insurance, are all very complex things that require massive institutions to manage successfully. But these crypto organizations are always just, shrug "yeah that's not our problem. Whatcha gonna do?" I guess that is the core principle to begin with. But it's interesting to watch it in action. "Oh that big ball of wax? We don't address it. Not our problem."
- dotnet00 3y ago
  With most crypto projects it's actively worse because they tell their users that "trust, fraud, identity etc don't matter because we have a blockchain!". The rare few which are pretty upfront in saying that in exchange for their strong privacy guarantees the user is fully responsible for everything, are the only ones with any real utility (eg Monero).
Alex3917 3y ago
> anyone, human or otherwise - can use that wallet. But there are only 8 billion people, which is literally an infinite improvement over the status quo.
- arcticbull 3y ago
  Yes, but it also assumes that the orb is perfect, and never hacked or reverse-engineered to generate completely arbitrary quantities of these keys. You're putting an awful lot of trust in this for a 'trustless' system.
  - 93po 3y ago
    There are ways to track which orb originated identities and it would be easy to mass remove a known compromised orb. It would result in some people needing to be rescanned but it would ultimately make this extremely high effort attack vector not very fruitful. Additionally any stolen orb would be immediately remotely blocked so this would take coordination with an orb operator who would also be banned for life
    - kemotep 3y ago
      If there are ways to track whose id came from what orb it is completely possible to deanonymize people’s world ids. And if worldid was ever used for a voting system, wiping out the votes of people who come from a specific area would be incredibly valuable. Attacking people’s identities even for only a few dollars each is a multibillion scam industry today.
arketyp 3y ago
It's funny how, in the end, the ultimate and perhaps only proof of personhood is being a person, engaged in the world. Sort of how the ultimate decentralized currency is encompassed in the global market of rising and falling economic powers. The oracle problem is a problem because there are no oracles. There is only the test of time. Or something along that line.
- brnt 3y ago
  People still don't understand the 'this is not a pipe' painting...
  - JohnFen 3y ago
    Indeed. I have better luck, though, with "The map is not the territory".
    - maxwell 3y ago
      https://generalsemantics.org/resources/documents/gsb-65-wilson.pdf https://generalsemantics.org/resources/documents/gsb-65-wils...
      - everybodyknows 3y ago
        Can you provide a synopsis of this lecture transcript?
        ineptech 3y ago
        It's a speech by the author Robert Anton Wilson discussing the work of Alfred Korzybski, who helped to explain and popularize the map/territory distinction and how it relates to the philosophy of science. I'm a huge fan of Wilson and Korzybski, the ideas Wilson discusses in this lecture definitely changed my life and the way that I think about science, but even I would caution that it's not all that relevant to the discussion here.
        3y ago
PurpleRamen 3y ago
Wait, the biometric information are only used for the creation of the wallet, not the later usage? Then isn't this scam? What is the actual value of using biometric for this?
- cguess 3y ago
  It's crypto, and it's Peter Thiel and Sam Altman, but definition it's a scam.
  - brian_cloutier 3y ago
    What do you mean when you say scam? Are you claiming this is fraudulent in some way?
    - Finnucane 3y ago
      As in, the promises they claim are different from the actual results, and they know this as they are saying them. It is a con, like everything crypto.
      - brian_cloutier 3y ago
        What is the thing they are claiming which is different from the actual results and which they know is different from the actual results?
        drngdds 3y ago
        That it actually freakin' works at doing the thing it's trying to do (providing a currency with a guarantee that each account is controlled by one person)
        brian_cloutier 3y ago
        I don't believe they have ever promised that. One person = one account is not at all how the system is designed. It is definitely never mentioned or promised here: https://whitepaper.worldcoin.org/ https://whitepaper.worldcoin.org/ and it is contrary to the system outlined in that document.
vsareto 3y ago
TBH it's hard to blame anyone for considering starting new cryptocurrencies. BTC/ETH have stuck around despite everything and remained at non-trivial prices. The "identity verification" step really just turns it into a club to join and that's still marketable in the world of cryptocurrency.
lazzlazzlazz 3y ago
You generate the secret keys beforehand in your wallet, and then only link them (in zero knowledge) with the iris hash.[1] , [2] If we're going to be critical, let's at least understand how it works first. [1]: https://twitter.com/ercwl/status/1684939802083282944 https://twitter.com/ercwl/status/1684939802083282944 [2]: https://vitalik.ca/general/2023/07/24/biometric.html https://vitalik.ca/general/2023/07/24/biometric.html
- brian_cloutier 3y ago
  Most criticisms of worldcoin completely misunderstand/misrepresent how it works but this one does not. The GP is correctly pointing out that the iris hash is only necessary for receiving some of the initial airdrop. It is completely true that once a wallet is generated (and you don't even need to visit an orb to create a wallet) anyone who possesses the private key, human or robot, can send transactions using that wallet. Receiving some of the initial airdrop really does require trusting worldcoin that they are telling the truth and not saving images of your iris.
  - kemotep 3y ago
    Is it possible for people to understand how it works and to still oppose it being broadly adopted in your opinion? Can you please clarify what exactly others are not understanding or misrepresenting?
    - brian_cloutier 3y ago
      It is of course possible to understand it and still be opposed. That's what makes it so frustrating that seemingly all of the negative coverage is ill-informed; I would love to read some informed criticism! Just some simple examples: > Imagine that your digital identity has been lost in some way — shut down by authorities for non-compliance, or otherwise blocked. With traditional cash — and other cryptocurrencies — you can always make a new wallet and stash some fresh coins in it. But this isn’t Minority Report, and you can’t get a new iris from your neighborhood surgeon. You don't need to walk up to an Orb to create a wallet. You can own and transact worldcoin without ever showing your iris to an orb. > When your immutable digital identity is locked — imagine merchants who won’t take your coins from you without a digital signature announcing your World ID — it’s over for you. No old account. No new account. No soup for you. You just lost your digital personhood. This is also possible... with every other form of payment? Imagine merchants who refuse to accept cash. Once the government locks your credit card you're out of luck. Imagine a world where you have to sign in with google before you can pay for anything (why is the worldid dystoia apparently so easy to imagine, while the google one seems silly?). Once the government locks your google account you're out of luck. A dystopia has _many_ levers to pull and refusing to deploy worldcoin is not have any impact on the success of that dystopia. There is really so much that it's not possible to clarify "exactly" what others aren't getting in a single comment, there are a dozen different misconceptions, if you have specific concerns I'm curious to hear them and attempt to reply to them.
hayd 3y ago
Instead of trusting Uncle Sam... trust Sam Altman.
no_wizard 3y ago
What’s the “Oracle Problem”? Google gives me conflicting results
- ineptech 3y ago
  The problem of moving information about the real world (stock prices, weather report, did the Knicks win last night) into a crypto ledger so that it can be speculated upon (e.g. a smart contract that only pays out if the Knicks win).
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- brian_cloutier 3y ago
  Try to imagine using a computer without any internet access to book an airline ticket. It doesn't really matter how many or which operations your computer can perform, it is not able to book an airline ticket unless there is another computer which can accept that booking and which your computer can talk to. The internet is next to useless for booking ryan air flights until ryan air puts one of their computers onto the internet and gives it authority to issue bookings. Blockchains are like virtual computers. It is absolutely possible to imagine ryan air deploying a smart contract to ethereum and giving it sufficient authority to issue bookings but until that happens ethereum is next to useless for booking ryan air flights. This is the oracle problem. Here I've focused on the write-path but "the oracle problem" usually refers to the read-path. Say you have some prediction market where participants can place bets on who the next US president will be. How do you resolve that market? When Congress certifies the election they do not publish that certification onto any blockchain. Maybe some day they will. But for now blockchains have to make do with various hacks which allow them to imperfectly track what is happening in the outside world.
  - ineptech 3y ago
    > When Congress certifies the election they do not publish that certification onto any blockchain. Maybe some day they will. The Oracle problem isn't the fact that this doesn't happen today, it's that it can never happen in a way that is trustable. When Congress (or anyone else) does decide to publish the election results to a blockchain, every dollar bet on the outcome will be a prize to be won by anyone who can subvert the publication process.
highwaylights 3y ago
I mean technically the system is proof-of-eyeball rather than proof-of-identity, so you also need to trust any opportunistic criminals in your zip code that have access to spoons.
- brian_cloutier 3y ago
  It looks like the airdrop gives you something like 25 WLD, or $50. I don't know what the actual numbers are but it seems to be around this order of magnitude. Your hypothetical spoon-wielding lunatic would be risking serious consequences in order to earn $50; that doesn't seem like a particularly strong incentive.
  - wahnfrieden 3y ago
    cripple beggars in calcutta, for example, earn approx 30 cents per day and organized criminals maim and manage them in order to extract this amount. you're confident they wouldn't use a spoon to take 160 days worth of income? and comparing to non-cripple beggars, it's about a full year of income. that sounds like substantial incentive to me.
    - science4sail 3y ago
      Even more ghastly, it seems like the criminals could use the spoons to convert non-cripple beggars into cripple beggars. That way they both get a one-time payment and a source of recurring revenue.
  - Perz1val 3y ago
    There's no reason not to take both eyeballs then
  - jprete 3y ago
    People have been murdered (in the US) for far less.
  - Raidion 3y ago
    I think any system that wants to store assets would expect to store >$50 eventually and the incentives grow correspondingly.
93po 3y ago
Yes but you’re missing the point that it’s a relatively easy and solved problem to ban accounts and have circles of trust for banned accounts. Because these buyers are constrained in how many accounts they can buy it’s relatively effortless to ban bad actors compared to literally limitless fake personas today.
woile 3y ago
To me the problem should be modelled similar to what we have now: Some institutions (private or public) giving an ok or not ok on the keys. And platforms choosing which institutions to trust. At some point we may have platform choosing all governments+trustworthy institutions You could make things like a "smart contract" returns your money (or triggers an investigation) if after 48 hours you report an issue with your account or transaction. Of course this would mean some change on the blockchains themselves
px43 3y ago
> it doesn't solve the oracle problem That was never the goal. > There's a black market in China for these identities already It is built such that eventually, Worldcoin identities can be trivially reclaimed by the iris owner, so the market for these identities will drop to zero once people realize they can just sell their same Worldcoin cred over and over again and some sucker is going to buy it. Their only goal here is to create an identity registration system where.. 1. people don't need money to register 2. people don't need to have special friends to register This is a sybil resistance mechanism, and no other system today does this. Also, the registration is basically fully anonymous. There is no way for anyone to enumerate everyone who has registered, and there is no way to link a registrant with the wallet activity of a credential holder. Say what you will, but IMO these are some pretty useful mechanics, and there are quite a few applications of this technology that can't be done without something like this.
- piva00 3y ago
  > Also, the registration is basically fully anonymous. You are uploading your iris scan into a black box, how can that be considered anonymous?
  - px43 3y ago
    Designs are mostly open, and plans are for the orbs to be fully open hardware. The iris is hashed into an "iriscode" and the detailed scans are deleted, and never leave the device. Iriscode is then linked via some zero knowledge proof witchcraft to activate a World ID on a new keypair, which is completely dissociated with the iriscode.
gmerc 3y ago
And they want to do nothing. That’s a silicon valley thing all along. The negative externalities of these massive scale business models are pushed to society. The scale and lack of security design is the cause of them. The mass scams on marketplace, the payment fraud, the harassment, the swatting, etc. If we forced these companies to meet sane standards (especially visible in fintech) and customer service, oh no, they couldn’t do so many stock buybacks anymore, what a tragedy.
adamc 3y ago
PT Barnum would be proud.
unicornfork 3y ago
On a general plane why do we even care to identify a (non) person? We should care whether the peer has some "skin in the game". For example a Bitcoin wallet with some Satoshis locked in a multi-signature smart contract would probably insure that. This approach would automatically ensure a free and robust digital identity and secure communication via secret/public key of that wallet. If some rules need to be imposed - they could be managed through the smart contract plus some type of an oracle - here I second your thought. Though in this approach (with bitcoin wallet as identity) it is easy to fund the proper process in a transparent and balanced way because the funds are there already.

meowface 3y ago

I understand your point, but why the separation of coin vs. non-coin tech? Meaning that the only real guarantee of cryptocurrency is prevention of double-spend rather than a confirmed unique identity?

arcticbull 3y ago
Blockchains can extend the guarantees of the blockchain only to concepts that can be completely represented on-chain, which basically meant just coins. They don't have to interface with the real world so aren't subject issues at the boundary. At least that's one way of looking at it. As soon as you start trying to represent things that actually exist in the real world authoritatively, it breaks down - because the authoritative representation is actually off chain, i.e reality. In this case your identity is the authoritative representation, not the key you present.
- jsunderland323 3y ago
  This is really well said. I’ve been trying to articulate this point for a long time. I think the boundary is between things that are temporal or bounded by real time and space vs things that are time independent and state based. Oracles always suffer from this problem even if the authoritative representation is another digital thing. For example the whole NFT url swapping thing. Similarly this comes up in version control a lot when your code depends on things that are unversioned, the commit state may be idempotent but the application is not.

Waterluvian 3y ago

I often see in software dev this idea of solving a problem by just offloading the problem onto another team/customer. I guess crypto is fundamentally that. Trust, fraud, identity, insurance, are all very complex things that require massive institutions to manage successfully. But these crypto organizations are always just, shrug "yeah that's not our problem. Whatcha gonna do?" I guess that is the core principle to begin with. But it's interesting to watch it in action. "Oh that big ball of wax? We don't address it. Not our problem."

dotnet00 3y ago
With most crypto projects it's actively worse because they tell their users that "trust, fraud, identity etc don't matter because we have a blockchain!". The rare few which are pretty upfront in saying that in exchange for their strong privacy guarantees the user is fully responsible for everything, are the only ones with any real utility (eg Monero).

Alex3917 3y ago

> anyone, human or otherwise - can use that wallet. But there are only 8 billion people, which is literally an infinite improvement over the status quo.

arcticbull 3y ago
Yes, but it also assumes that the orb is perfect, and never hacked or reverse-engineered to generate completely arbitrary quantities of these keys. You're putting an awful lot of trust in this for a 'trustless' system.
- 93po 3y ago
  There are ways to track which orb originated identities and it would be easy to mass remove a known compromised orb. It would result in some people needing to be rescanned but it would ultimately make this extremely high effort attack vector not very fruitful. Additionally any stolen orb would be immediately remotely blocked so this would take coordination with an orb operator who would also be banned for life
  - kemotep 3y ago
    If there are ways to track whose id came from what orb it is completely possible to deanonymize people’s world ids. And if worldid was ever used for a voting system, wiping out the votes of people who come from a specific area would be incredibly valuable. Attacking people’s identities even for only a few dollars each is a multibillion scam industry today.

arketyp 3y ago

It's funny how, in the end, the ultimate and perhaps only proof of personhood is being a person, engaged in the world. Sort of how the ultimate decentralized currency is encompassed in the global market of rising and falling economic powers. The oracle problem is a problem because there are no oracles. There is only the test of time. Or something along that line.

brnt 3y ago
People still don't understand the 'this is not a pipe' painting...
- JohnFen 3y ago
  Indeed. I have better luck, though, with "The map is not the territory".
  - maxwell 3y ago
    https://generalsemantics.org/resources/documents/gsb-65-wilson.pdf https://generalsemantics.org/resources/documents/gsb-65-wils...
    - everybodyknows 3y ago
      Can you provide a synopsis of this lecture transcript?
      - ineptech 3y ago
        It's a speech by the author Robert Anton Wilson discussing the work of Alfred Korzybski, who helped to explain and popularize the map/territory distinction and how it relates to the philosophy of science. I'm a huge fan of Wilson and Korzybski, the ideas Wilson discusses in this lecture definitely changed my life and the way that I think about science, but even I would caution that it's not all that relevant to the discussion here.
      - 3y ago

PurpleRamen 3y ago

Wait, the biometric information are only used for the creation of the wallet, not the later usage? Then isn't this scam? What is the actual value of using biometric for this?

cguess 3y ago
It's crypto, and it's Peter Thiel and Sam Altman, but definition it's a scam.
- brian_cloutier 3y ago
  What do you mean when you say scam? Are you claiming this is fraudulent in some way?
  - Finnucane 3y ago
    As in, the promises they claim are different from the actual results, and they know this as they are saying them. It is a con, like everything crypto.
    - brian_cloutier 3y ago
      What is the thing they are claiming which is different from the actual results and which they know is different from the actual results?
      - drngdds 3y ago
        That it actually freakin' works at doing the thing it's trying to do (providing a currency with a guarantee that each account is controlled by one person)
        brian_cloutier 3y ago
        I don't believe they have ever promised that. One person = one account is not at all how the system is designed. It is definitely never mentioned or promised here: https://whitepaper.worldcoin.org/ https://whitepaper.worldcoin.org/ and it is contrary to the system outlined in that document.

vsareto 3y ago

TBH it's hard to blame anyone for considering starting new cryptocurrencies. BTC/ETH have stuck around despite everything and remained at non-trivial prices. The "identity verification" step really just turns it into a club to join and that's still marketable in the world of cryptocurrency.

lazzlazzlazz 3y ago

You generate the secret keys beforehand in your wallet, and then only link them (in zero knowledge) with the iris hash.[1] , [2] If we're going to be critical, let's at least understand how it works first. [1]: https://twitter.com/ercwl/status/1684939802083282944 https://twitter.com/ercwl/status/1684939802083282944 [2]: https://vitalik.ca/general/2023/07/24/biometric.html https://vitalik.ca/general/2023/07/24/biometric.html

brian_cloutier 3y ago
Most criticisms of worldcoin completely misunderstand/misrepresent how it works but this one does not. The GP is correctly pointing out that the iris hash is only necessary for receiving some of the initial airdrop. It is completely true that once a wallet is generated (and you don't even need to visit an orb to create a wallet) anyone who possesses the private key, human or robot, can send transactions using that wallet. Receiving some of the initial airdrop really does require trusting worldcoin that they are telling the truth and not saving images of your iris.
- kemotep 3y ago
  Is it possible for people to understand how it works and to still oppose it being broadly adopted in your opinion? Can you please clarify what exactly others are not understanding or misrepresenting?
  - brian_cloutier 3y ago
    It is of course possible to understand it and still be opposed. That's what makes it so frustrating that seemingly all of the negative coverage is ill-informed; I would love to read some informed criticism! Just some simple examples: > Imagine that your digital identity has been lost in some way — shut down by authorities for non-compliance, or otherwise blocked. With traditional cash — and other cryptocurrencies — you can always make a new wallet and stash some fresh coins in it. But this isn’t Minority Report, and you can’t get a new iris from your neighborhood surgeon. You don't need to walk up to an Orb to create a wallet. You can own and transact worldcoin without ever showing your iris to an orb. > When your immutable digital identity is locked — imagine merchants who won’t take your coins from you without a digital signature announcing your World ID — it’s over for you. No old account. No new account. No soup for you. You just lost your digital personhood. This is also possible... with every other form of payment? Imagine merchants who refuse to accept cash. Once the government locks your credit card you're out of luck. Imagine a world where you have to sign in with google before you can pay for anything (why is the worldid dystoia apparently so easy to imagine, while the google one seems silly?). Once the government locks your google account you're out of luck. A dystopia has _many_ levers to pull and refusing to deploy worldcoin is not have any impact on the success of that dystopia. There is really so much that it's not possible to clarify "exactly" what others aren't getting in a single comment, there are a dozen different misconceptions, if you have specific concerns I'm curious to hear them and attempt to reply to them.

hayd 3y ago

Instead of trusting Uncle Sam... trust Sam Altman.

no_wizard 3y ago

What’s the “Oracle Problem”? Google gives me conflicting results

ineptech 3y ago
The problem of moving information about the real world (stock prices, weather report, did the Knicks win last night) into a crypto ledger so that it can be speculated upon (e.g. a smart contract that only pays out if the Knicks win).
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
brian_cloutier 3y ago
Try to imagine using a computer without any internet access to book an airline ticket. It doesn't really matter how many or which operations your computer can perform, it is not able to book an airline ticket unless there is another computer which can accept that booking and which your computer can talk to. The internet is next to useless for booking ryan air flights until ryan air puts one of their computers onto the internet and gives it authority to issue bookings. Blockchains are like virtual computers. It is absolutely possible to imagine ryan air deploying a smart contract to ethereum and giving it sufficient authority to issue bookings but until that happens ethereum is next to useless for booking ryan air flights. This is the oracle problem. Here I've focused on the write-path but "the oracle problem" usually refers to the read-path. Say you have some prediction market where participants can place bets on who the next US president will be. How do you resolve that market? When Congress certifies the election they do not publish that certification onto any blockchain. Maybe some day they will. But for now blockchains have to make do with various hacks which allow them to imperfectly track what is happening in the outside world.
- ineptech 3y ago
  > When Congress certifies the election they do not publish that certification onto any blockchain. Maybe some day they will. The Oracle problem isn't the fact that this doesn't happen today, it's that it can never happen in a way that is trustable. When Congress (or anyone else) does decide to publish the election results to a blockchain, every dollar bet on the outcome will be a prize to be won by anyone who can subvert the publication process.

highwaylights 3y ago

I mean technically the system is proof-of-eyeball rather than proof-of-identity, so you also need to trust any opportunistic criminals in your zip code that have access to spoons.

brian_cloutier 3y ago
It looks like the airdrop gives you something like 25 WLD, or $50. I don't know what the actual numbers are but it seems to be around this order of magnitude. Your hypothetical spoon-wielding lunatic would be risking serious consequences in order to earn $50; that doesn't seem like a particularly strong incentive.
- wahnfrieden 3y ago
  cripple beggars in calcutta, for example, earn approx 30 cents per day and organized criminals maim and manage them in order to extract this amount. you're confident they wouldn't use a spoon to take 160 days worth of income? and comparing to non-cripple beggars, it's about a full year of income. that sounds like substantial incentive to me.
  - science4sail 3y ago
    Even more ghastly, it seems like the criminals could use the spoons to convert non-cripple beggars into cripple beggars. That way they both get a one-time payment and a source of recurring revenue.
- Perz1val 3y ago
  There's no reason not to take both eyeballs then
- jprete 3y ago
  People have been murdered (in the US) for far less.
- Raidion 3y ago
  I think any system that wants to store assets would expect to store >$50 eventually and the incentives grow correspondingly.

93po 3y ago

Yes but you’re missing the point that it’s a relatively easy and solved problem to ban accounts and have circles of trust for banned accounts. Because these buyers are constrained in how many accounts they can buy it’s relatively effortless to ban bad actors compared to literally limitless fake personas today.

woile 3y ago

To me the problem should be modelled similar to what we have now: Some institutions (private or public) giving an ok or not ok on the keys. And platforms choosing which institutions to trust. At some point we may have platform choosing all governments+trustworthy institutions You could make things like a "smart contract" returns your money (or triggers an investigation) if after 48 hours you report an issue with your account or transaction. Of course this would mean some change on the blockchains themselves

px43 3y ago

> it doesn't solve the oracle problem That was never the goal. > There's a black market in China for these identities already It is built such that eventually, Worldcoin identities can be trivially reclaimed by the iris owner, so the market for these identities will drop to zero once people realize they can just sell their same Worldcoin cred over and over again and some sucker is going to buy it. Their only goal here is to create an identity registration system where.. 1. people don't need money to register 2. people don't need to have special friends to register This is a sybil resistance mechanism, and no other system today does this. Also, the registration is basically fully anonymous. There is no way for anyone to enumerate everyone who has registered, and there is no way to link a registrant with the wallet activity of a credential holder. Say what you will, but IMO these are some pretty useful mechanics, and there are quite a few applications of this technology that can't be done without something like this.

piva00 3y ago
> Also, the registration is basically fully anonymous. You are uploading your iris scan into a black box, how can that be considered anonymous?
- px43 3y ago
  Designs are mostly open, and plans are for the orbs to be fully open hardware. The iris is hashed into an "iriscode" and the detailed scans are deleted, and never leave the device. Iriscode is then linked via some zero knowledge proof witchcraft to activate a World ID on a new keypair, which is completely dissociated with the iriscode.

gmerc 3y ago

And they want to do nothing. That’s a silicon valley thing all along. The negative externalities of these massive scale business models are pushed to society. The scale and lack of security design is the cause of them. The mass scams on marketplace, the payment fraud, the harassment, the swatting, etc. If we forced these companies to meet sane standards (especially visible in fintech) and customer service, oh no, they couldn’t do so many stock buybacks anymore, what a tragedy.

adamc 3y ago

PT Barnum would be proud.

unicornfork 3y ago

On a general plane why do we even care to identify a (non) person? We should care whether the peer has some "skin in the game". For example a Bitcoin wallet with some Satoshis locked in a multi-signature smart contract would probably insure that. This approach would automatically ensure a free and robust digital identity and secure communication via secret/public key of that wallet. If some rules need to be imposed - they could be managed through the smart contract plus some type of an oracle - here I second your thought. Though in this approach (with bitcoin wallet as identity) it is easy to fund the proper process in a transparent and balanced way because the funds are there already.