14 ms·

Worldcoin: A solution in search of its problem

234 points by ecliptik 3y ago

DropInIn 3y ago
Cataracts, accidents damaging eyes, etc The whole thing is designed to exclude the disadvantaged and disconnect the formerly advantaged from thier funds when they face an unexpected change in ocular health.
PeterStuer 3y ago
Is it realy a 'search' if you intend to create the problem?
nazgulsenpai 3y ago
We really don't deserve Molly White but thank goodness we have her. For those who don't know she also runs Web3 is Going Just Great[0] [0]https://web3isgoinggreat.com/ https://web3isgoinggreat.com/
- sorokod 3y ago
  And if you like her work, consider support and a donation: https://web3isgoinggreat.com/contribute https://web3isgoinggreat.com/contribute
coffeebeqn 3y ago
True for most crypto projects
- offtwit 3y ago
  All
  - rvz 3y ago
    Not ‘All’. Just like 90% of startups fail, it is the same with 90% of crypto startups, and AI startups will fail. The 10% remaining will continue to exist. Just stop this absolutist nonsense.
    - lolinder 3y ago
      The absolutism is a bit extreme, but your comparison isn't really fair either. Outside of crypto, we don't regularly see startups get loads of hype and money only to explode so spectacularly that the founders end up in jail.
      - rvz 3y ago
        > Outside of crypto, we don't regularly see startups get loads of hype and money only to explode so spectacularly that the founders end up in jail. It is already known that the majority of unprofitable startups take tons of VC money and have regularly played the Silicon Valley playbook of 'faking it' until they are caught out in the open [0] [1] [2]. It has gotten so common to the extent where their favourite bank (SVB) went under with all these unprofitable startups crying over payroll when generating little to no revenue with inflated valuations. We were supposed to learn from that VC pyramid scheme that has caused SVB to collapse which was so seismic that all those unprofitable startups would all have gone bust had capitalism just run its course without government intervention. There really is no defence for continuing the constant dependence on raising VC money in unprofitable startups for years anymore after over-leveraging and injecting more cash at unjustified valuations in these startups. For this scam to be revealed so late shows how long many startups were able to get away from 'faking it'. [0] https://www.theguardian.com/media/2023/feb/23/ozy-media-founder-carlos-watson-arrested-fraud-charges https://www.theguardian.com/media/2023/feb/23/ozy-media-foun... [1] https://abcnews.go.com/US/startup-founders-alleged-175-million-fraud-spotlights-inequality/story?id=98470145 https://abcnews.go.com/US/startup-founders-alleged-175-milli... [2] https://www.cnbc.com/2022/10/14/nikola-nkla-founder-trevor-milton-found-guilty-of-fraud-.html https://www.cnbc.com/2022/10/14/nikola-nkla-founder-trevor-m...
    - malermeister 3y ago
      Can you name a concrete counterexample of a crypto venture that provides actual value to society?
      - rvz 3y ago
        Yes. Moneygram, Circle and Stellar launched and aid program (Stellar Aid) that allows near instant, very low-fee and cross-border P2P payments worldwide to those in need of it. [0] [0] https://thefintechtimes.com/stellar-aid-assist-creates-new-relief-fund-delivery-platform-for-ukraine https://thefintechtimes.com/stellar-aid-assist-creates-new-r...
konschubert 3y ago
I do not understand how this is supposed to prevent sibyl attacks? How do they prevent fake virtual iris scanning devices from pretending that they scanned a person that doesn’t actually exist? Or is the idea that sama is will run a centralised private identity system that aims to replace government identity management? Then why do you need crypto? Are they trying to replace proof of stake/proof of work with “proof of being a human being”? I don’t see how the iris scanning achieves this? I think it’s fundamentally impossible. If you don’t have a centralised authority verifying identity, the best thing you can get is peer-to-peer federated identity verification like PGP. But with this, identity is relative, as in “I trust a guy who trusts a gal who says this person is real”.
- aionaiodfgnio 3y ago
  Of course it will be centralized! There is no cryptocurrency that isn't. Cryptocurrencies can't scale without centralization, and there's no way to interface with the real world without some sort of trust.
- espadrine 3y ago
  The signup module is indeed a centralized system, which then records the new registration on a distributed ledger (which only someone with Worldcoin’s private key can do). From there, payment operations are done distributed on Ethereum / L2. The signup process is always a sensitive part of a cryptosystem, and open network membership is not always expected (for instance, CBDCs, Ripple…). There is certainly a philosophical argument to be made against closed membership, since it can disadvantage people that struggle for access, and lets the company discriminate in the future once they get a stronghold, which can be especially problematic considering the primary value of human-uniqueness is to restrict voting to an in-group whose bounds historically have been heavily argued even in non-repressive regimes. But it seems unlikely to become predominant. Some people have prosthetic eyes; I would be hard-pressed to imagine, say, Apple releasing an iPhone that is inaccessible to a population in such a significant way.
  - konschubert 3y ago
    If you have centralised signup and identity you may as well run a Postgres DB or a git repo. It could still be a cool idea, but I don’t get how this needs crypto?
aionaiodfgnio 3y ago
This is a grift I don't understand. Obviously there is no legitimate reason for it to exist, but what is the illegitimate reason? How do the people behind this scheme expect to benefit? Is it a good old fashioned pump and dump? Do they somehow expect to profit from the biometric data? Do they expect to gain political power by setting up this quasi-government? I don't get it.
fvdessen 3y ago
Once again it is completely ignored that the whole online identity thing is a solved problem, in the EU. Millions of Europeans use eIDAS apps daily and enjoy single-sign-on across EU websites, can sign docs, make payments etc. etc. And there’s no privacy issues thanks to the GDPR, which it turns out is not just about cookie popups The tech is there, it works today, without crypto bullshit, and it is extremely useful. But since nobody became a billionaire out of it, nobody talks about it
- zajio1am 3y ago
  Are eIDAS identity services even interoperable for private service providers? AFAIK public service providers use national portals that aggregate identity providers, but private service providers must have a contract with identity providers. > But since nobody became a billionaire out of it, nobody talks about it Here in CZ, the law was setup in a way that gives advantage to banks compared to other identity providers, these banks created one consortium, which is essentially monopolistic provider, with ~80 % market share, asking private services providers significant money for identity services.
- nmat 3y ago
  Reminds how US centric a lot of crypto companies are. An advantage of crypto that often comes up is “instant and cheap money transfers”. In the UK, I transfer money to my friends instantaneously and for free using just my bank account.
  - AnthonyMouse 3y ago
    > In the UK, I transfer money to my friends instantaneously and for free using just my bank account. You can do the same thing in the US. The problem is that businesses can't easily do this without collecting bank routing information from customers, which is effectively "secret" because it allows anyone to debit money directly from their bank account, so they're reluctant to provide it. What's needed is a low- or no-fee system for requesting payments from someone without collecting any secrets from them. The technology to do this is not hard -- use public key cryptography, or just require the customer to approve merchants before they can make debits. But the customer's bank has little incentive to implement this because the customer won't choose a different bank over it and meanwhile the banks own the credit processing networks charging the high fees. Which is why people are looking for an external solution.
lolinder 3y ago
> While Worldcoin may have developed an algorithm that reliably distinguishes unique irises among its test pool, it’s not clear that it will work with a pool orders of magnitude larger. This is a really key problem. The main application of biometrics today is in cell phones, and for those we operate on the assumption that we're trying to distinguish between the authorized user and a quite small pool of non-authorized people who will have physical access to the device: family members, friends, co-workers, and the occasional thief. This threat profile allows the biometric algorithm to err on the side of usability—it's more important that the algorithm consistently open the phone when shown the user's fingerprint or face than it is that there be no other human being on the planet who could open it. Worldcoin has a very different threat profile, and it's not obvious to me that is possible to have a usable biometrics system (with an acceptably low false negative rate) that also has absolutely zero risk of hash collisions when the pool of unique people you need to distinguish is the size of the entire planet.
- kibwen 3y ago
  > the pool of unique people you need to distinguish is the size of the entire planet Not merely the size of the entire planet. If they hope that this scheme lasts in perpetuity, it will need to distinguish between all individuals who will ever be born.
- panarky 3y ago
  If the iris hash function produces a false negative, does the owner of the iris lose access to their assets?
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
- remcob 3y ago
  This is essentially the Birthday paradox. You need a quadratically better false match rate to deduplicate than to authenticate. It’s also why Worldcoin went with Irises (highest entropy among biometrics), custom hardware, custom optics and an in-house trained algorithm.
fredgrott 3y ago
I have a Sam Altman story... I did a pre-interview to work for one of Sam's first startups, the mobile one that had the date via GPS idea. Turned down going beyond the pre-interview due to concept and funding combination not being compatible with reality. You have to remember at that point in time Mobile OEMs were locking down GPS access through apps and Mobile Operators were attempting to pretend they were VCs. Not every slide deck that gets money is a good slide deck!!
- latchkey 3y ago
  This is a story about Sam?
  - optimalsolver 3y ago
    https://www.reuters.com/technology/openais-sam-altman-launches-worldcoin-crypto-project-2023-07-24/ https://www.reuters.com/technology/openais-sam-altman-launch...
    - latchkey 3y ago
      And? I was talking to the op about their story... don't need a link to a worldcoin announcement, thanks.
      - optimalsolver 3y ago
        This is an article about Worlcoin, Sam Altman's pet project, and OP is sharing an anecdote about Sam Altman. Not sure why you find this so confusing, but I'll be happy to walk you through it slowly.
        qwerasdf5 3y ago
        It's not clear whether or not he talked to Sam Altman in his/her "pre-interview". If I had a pre-interview for a job at Amazon, does that mean I have a Jeff Bezos story?
lucasyvas 3y ago
It disappoints me to see anyone discussing this on technical merits when the whole thing is a laughably bad idea. It really just needs to be buried into the ground before it gets started.
- lawn 3y ago
  Smart people missing the forest for the trees. Nothing new, but still disappointing.
- wmf 3y ago
  The world would be significantly worse off if it just ran on your gut instincts. In the particular case of Worldcoin it's still bad once you understand the details but that's just luck.
  - AlexandrB 3y ago
    I feel like the world would be better off if VC money was funneled into more local small businesses and "lifestyle" startups, not 100m+ "moonshots" like this. Unfortunately that doesn't "scale".
spaceman_2020 3y ago
This is pretty much true for almost all of crypto.
kgeist 3y ago
>there is no “password reset” when it comes to iris data This is the most critical part, I think. If my Iris scan is leaked (which is not hard to do, from modified Orbs, similar to credit card skimmers, to mobsters scanning people's irises under threat of death), my identity will be stolen and I can't do anything about it. Do they have at least some sort of 2FA?
- hef19898 3y ago
  They didn't have it neither in Demolotion Man, and it worked great!
- wmf 3y ago
  I think their plan is that if you re-scan your eyes the system revokes any previous (sold/stolen) identities associated with your eyes and issues you a new one, like a password reset process. This doesn't help if someone can use a leaked hash to trigger the reset process though.
  - treyd 3y ago
    Is there any reasonable way to make this work that doesn't involve the company keeping plaintext copies of Iris scans and/or retaining the ability to arbitrarily reset account keys on the ledger (such that users have to trust them to behave honestly)? What happens if a modified Orb is used to dumo the scans and then later trigger a fake reset?
- 93po 3y ago
  Modified orbs won't be able to add iris scans
- tim333 3y ago
  (Scanned yesterday). I don't think this is about identity. You don't have to give any when you scan - you can claim to Mickey Mouse for all they care. It's more a way to distribute shitcoins evenly.
voz_ 3y ago
Death to crypto, let it end already.
latchkey 3y ago
A lot of people here are questioning how this works. Vitalik went through a pretty good analysis of the mechanics recently [0]. What is it with founders named Sam who are scammers? [0] https://vitalik.eth.limo/general/2023/07/24/biometric.html https://vitalik.eth.limo/general/2023/07/24/biometric.html
- Wormable 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - latchkey 3y ago
    It was a reference to SBF and had nothing to do with being anti-semitic.
  - JumpCrisscross 3y ago
    > Sam[uel] is merely a common Jewish first name This shouldn’t be downvoted. I have heard OP’s joke. That it could come across as anti-Semitic, despite almost never being intended that way, is a good heads up.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
qingcharles 3y ago
This image (FTA) is straight out of some insane dystopian nightmare: https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fded02b83-4a82-4616-b44c-c9c457c4a33e_1339x886.jpeg https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_pr... That the photo represents a real event in real reality is absurd o_O
- hef19898 3y ago
  Some people take cyberpunk as entertainment, some as a paraody, some as a warning, some as all of the above. And some take it as blue print worth pursueing. EDIT: The while premise of needing a nin-centralized wax of confirming ones identity is, at its core, deeply un-demicratic. As of bow, government issued documentation confirms anyones identiy. These governments can be democratic, and are. Puting a different system in place, controlled by some tech-billionaire-liberitarian, is as dytopian as it gets. So of course VCs are investing like hell in it.
  - WeylandYutani 3y ago
    I've always seen libertarians not as pursuers of freedom but as people who want to replace the police with a private security force. Libertarians want to live in a world where they are accountable to no-one. It's the ultimate conclusion of capitalism: wealth makes right. Serfdom and (sexual) exploitation for those of us who are not rich.
  - ttepasse 3y ago
    @AlexBlechman on TwiX had this tweet some years ago: Sci-Fi Author: In my book I invented the Torment Nexus as a cautionary tale Tech Company: At long last, we have created the Torment Nexus from classic sci-fi novel Don't Create The Torment Nexus
    - qingcharles 3y ago
      I soiled myself laughing. Thank you.
  - 3y ago
pitahat 3y ago
I agree with certain sentiments, especially whether there is an actual product market fit for this, but the tech analysis here is sloppy. Molly is a crypto sceptic so suffers from confirmation bias.
- lolinder 3y ago
  Can you provide a better critique than a single-word dismissal ("sloppy")? Molly is a crypto skeptic, but that fact alone doesn't make her analysis sloppy. If you have some insights into where she's wrong, please do share.
- thesausageking 3y ago
  Yeh, I have a lot of problems with Worldcoin but this isn't a great post on it or the issues. You can tell she went in with the intention to write something for an audience that hates crypto and wants to be told they're right. As a comparison, Vitalik wrote a great, even handed analysis: https://vitalik.ca/general/2023/07/24/biometric.html https://vitalik.ca/general/2023/07/24/biometric.html
SkyMarshal 3y ago
Lots of good analysis here, with the main flaw (imho) coming in last*. The WC team may be book smart, but not experienced or wise, especially in building complex systems with high integrity and assurance. They cut too many corners, take too many intellectual shortcuts, assume away too many hard problems, minimize important constraints inherent in their chosen architecture, and clearly haven't really thought it all through. Wishful thinking is no substitute for sound engineering. All red flags of a project doomed to fail. *> A black market for Worldcoin accounts has already emerged [1] in Cambodia, Nigeria, and elsewhere, where people are being paid to sign up for a World ID and then transfer ownership to buyers elsewhere — many of whom are in China, where Worldcoin is restricted. There is no ongoing verification process to ensure that a World ID continues to belong to the person who signed up for it, and no way for the eyeball-haver to recover an account that is under another person’s control. Worldcoin acknowledges that they have no clue how to resolve the issue: “Innovative ideas in mechanism design and the attribution of social relationships will be necessary.“ The lack of ongoing verification also means that there is no mechanism by which people can be removed from the program once they pass away, but perhaps Worldcoin will add survivors’ benefits to its list of use cases and call that a feature. Relatively speaking, scanning your iris and selling the account is fairly benign. But depending on the popularity of Worldcoin, the eventual price of WLD, and the types of things a World ID can be used to accomplish, the incentives to gain access to others’ accounts could become severe. Coercion at the individual or state level is absolutely within the realm of possibility, and could become dangerous. [1]:https://web3isgoinggreat.com/?id=sam-altmans-worldcoin-project-incentivizes-a-black-market-for-biometric-data-taken-from-people-in-developing-nations https://web3isgoinggreat.com/?id=sam-altmans-worldcoin-proje...
- _9omd 3y ago
  I can’t imagine how naive you have to be to not see account selling as a massive problem. Especially when your plan is to first onboard users in poor countries. Why would these people do anything other than signup and immediately sell their accounts, for what may amount to a month or two of normal pay, just for waiting in line and getting scanned. I find it crazy that they claimed their system is Sybil resistant when it had this most obvious flaw. Maybe they don’t really give a crap and just wanted to collect that sweet sweet VC money.
blackle 3y ago
If you're trying to build a world where a person's iris is their unique proof of personhood, then you are building a world where people without eyes are not people. I cannot see a way around this.
- antigonemerlin 3y ago
  Add it onto the list of "falsehoods programmers believe in". https://github.com/kdeldycke/awesome-falsehood https://github.com/kdeldycke/awesome-falsehood
aeurielesn 3y ago
> He is selling the antidote to the poison he is, coincidentally, also selling. The irony.
_9omd 3y ago
Remember, Sam Altman is the guy who made open AI into closed AI, and he’s the cofounder of this. If you think he has any intent of making this an open decentralized system that benefits people you’re likely mistaken.
- JohnFen 3y ago
  It was Sam Altman being behind WorldCoin that made me very suspicious of OpenAI when I learned he was involved with that, too.
- tarruda 3y ago
  I would not trust someone who claims they are working on a project that benefits people. I would be less suspicious of someone working on a selfish project that might benefit people as a side effect.
  - 93po 3y ago
    Sam Altman's work on OpenAI is hard to characterize as selfish when he owns none of it and doesn't get paid for it.
    - Atotalnoob 3y ago
      He is the CEO, and according to levels.fyi, they give out stock grants. Why on earth would the CEO not get a stock grant when the entry level SWEs do?
      - ascorbic 3y ago
        He's said that he doesn't take any stock. I don't know why so many people thing this is strange. He's already immensely rich. While this role might not make him richer, but it does give him huge amounts of power and influence.
        blitzar 3y ago
        Richness comes in many flavours other than $$$s. As you point out huge amounts of power and influence - something money cant buy.
gcatalfamo 3y ago
I am going to be downvoted to death, but it is clear from last year events that Sam Altman is truly that kind of "Blade Runner/Robocop(1)"-like antagonist character that has a narcissistic drive to destroy the world just so he can show everybody he is saving it. (1) Pick your 80's Sci-Fi movie dystopia that fits here.
- 93po 3y ago
  It seems unfair to attack someone so personally without providing neutrally presented evidence to support it
  - monkaiju 3y ago
    I feel theres plenty of evidence... he's a super rich public figure known to lie to get traction on his projects. He doesn't need your protection
    - 93po 3y ago
      It's not about me protecting some billionaire that doesn't give a shit about me. It's about protecting reasonable discussion and trying to keep discussion in reality instead of it just being an echo chamber of "ai man bad". If I just wanted to see outrage and shitting on someone without substance I'd go read reddit and twitter. Plenty of evidence... of which still none is being presented neutrally.
      - ShamelessC 3y ago
        There is a bunch of evidence in the article we're commenting on. Good faith assumption that people have all read the article before commenting is (supposedly) a premise of HN's culture. In practice, many people who comment are responding solely to a comment or to the title presented.
        koonsolo 3y ago
        I read the article, didn't see any evidence of the above claims. Still waiting for such evidence...
happytiger 3y ago
This is the most dystopian project I’ve ever seen and a total wolf in sheep’s clothing. Hell it might better called a wolf in wolf’s clothing. I find it difficult that this kind of project is attached to Altman — it’s not a good look for someone playing around with controversial human replacement technologies capable of insane global control and manipulation. Let’s invent a crypto that tracks every human on the planet using their immutable characteristics. It’ll be fine. What can go wrong? This information won’t be used inappropriately I’m sure. Never trust a rich person who wraps themselves in the cloak of human interest or says they are “of the people.” The establishment isn’t in the business of teaching you to disrupt it.
snapey 3y ago
If AI becomes sophisticated enough to take our jobs, then it should be capable of creating a system that solves UBI at scale.
- JohnFen 3y ago
  The problem with implementing UBI at scale isn't a technological one, it's a sociopolitical one. I don't see how an AI can be of much help there.
jowea 3y ago
Anyone knows why is it valued at billions? Where is the profit to stockholders supposed to come from? And value for the cryptocoin?
- nmfisher 3y ago
  I buy 0.0001% of your company for $1000. Congrats, your company is now "valued" at 1 billion dollars!
93po 3y ago
It's exhausting refuting everyone's misconceptions. I will simply say that most people, which probably includes you, don't understand the entirety of how this project works and you therefore make assumptions that are incorrect. It doesn't store biometric data. It doesn't store any information that is useful to anyone for any purpose. The only thing it can do is tell if your iris has been scanned before. That's it. It can't reproduce what your iris looks like and can't sell any useful data about it to anyone. It does in fact allow online activity with privacy and while remaining anonymous. There is no way to link accounts between sites unless you do so yourself. Yes, people will sell accounts. This is fine because it still solves the problem of people being able to make infinite accounts online at present. It still creates a barrier of entry for spam where there currently is often very little or none. Inauthentic behavior online will continue but not at the rampant pace it currently has. There's lots more I could say but I'm not going to change minds that aren't open to rational discussion and instead engage in the perpetual outrage machine that is social media and corporate news. If you have genuine curious questions that aren't easily answered by their website, feel free to ask and I will answer as best I can. I have no affiliation other than I'm working on a personal project with their API.
- lolinder 3y ago
  This honestly feels like you didn't even read the article and are responding to what you think it says. If I'm wrong I'd be happy to have you clarify why Molly is wrong, instead of just generally asserting that people misunderstand. > It doesn't store biometric data. She addresses this: they do in fact store the biometric scans if you opt in, and they strongly encourage you to opt in because if you don't you'll have to periodically reverify as they tweak the algorithm. > It doesn't store any information that is useful to anyone for any purpose. The only thing it can do is tell if your iris has been scanned before. That's it. It can't reproduce what your iris looks like and can't sell any useful data about it to anyone. As Molly points out, you're making a huge assumption that this number that uniquely identifies your iris isn't useful information to sell to someone (or for someone to hack). > Yes, people will sell accounts. This is fine because it still solves the problem of people being able to make infinite accounts online at present. It still creates a barrier of entry for spam where there currently is often very little or none. Inauthentic behavior online will continue but not at the rampant pace it currently has. This is where the project really needs to figure out what it's actually trying to do. If the goal is simply to reduce inauthentic behavior on the ETH chain, then it's possible that you are right that sale of accounts doesn't matter. But if the goal is to provide some sort of UBI system, the fact that it has no way to verify who is using the account after its initial creation is a huge huge problem that will lead to massive amounts of corruption and harm if they succeed at implementing the kind of worldwide UBI they're talking about. Just look at what happens to humanitarian aid that goes into territory controlled by warlords: that's what we're talking about. Again, Molly addresses this, so it feels like you didn't read her article.
great_psy 3y ago
Does anybody know if the actual iris information gets stored, or it’s just a hash of it ? Seems like there is no reason why the iris picture needs to be stored. But I’m not sure of the whole use case
- psd1 3y ago
  rtfa
- JohnFen 3y ago
  It's a hash. But that doesn't eliminate the serious privacy issues with it.
  - great_psy 3y ago
    Ok, Assuming the it’s a well known hash it seems a bit more secure. Can’t do any searches on people based on the iris.
Dig1t 3y ago
Well today I learned that the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project exists. Pretty awesome.

234 points by ecliptik 3y ago

Cataracts, accidents damaging eyes, etc The whole thing is designed to exclude the disadvantaged and disconnect the formerly advantaged from thier funds when they face an unexpected change in ocular health.

PeterStuer 3y ago

Is it realy a 'search' if you intend to create the problem?

nazgulsenpai 3y ago

We really don't deserve Molly White but thank goodness we have her. For those who don't know she also runs Web3 is Going Just Great[0] [0]https://web3isgoinggreat.com/ https://web3isgoinggreat.com/

sorokod 3y ago
And if you like her work, consider support and a donation: https://web3isgoinggreat.com/contribute https://web3isgoinggreat.com/contribute

coffeebeqn 3y ago

True for most crypto projects

offtwit 3y ago
All
- rvz 3y ago
  Not ‘All’. Just like 90% of startups fail, it is the same with 90% of crypto startups, and AI startups will fail. The 10% remaining will continue to exist. Just stop this absolutist nonsense.
  - lolinder 3y ago
    The absolutism is a bit extreme, but your comparison isn't really fair either. Outside of crypto, we don't regularly see startups get loads of hype and money only to explode so spectacularly that the founders end up in jail.
    - rvz 3y ago
      > Outside of crypto, we don't regularly see startups get loads of hype and money only to explode so spectacularly that the founders end up in jail. It is already known that the majority of unprofitable startups take tons of VC money and have regularly played the Silicon Valley playbook of 'faking it' until they are caught out in the open [0] [1] [2]. It has gotten so common to the extent where their favourite bank (SVB) went under with all these unprofitable startups crying over payroll when generating little to no revenue with inflated valuations. We were supposed to learn from that VC pyramid scheme that has caused SVB to collapse which was so seismic that all those unprofitable startups would all have gone bust had capitalism just run its course without government intervention. There really is no defence for continuing the constant dependence on raising VC money in unprofitable startups for years anymore after over-leveraging and injecting more cash at unjustified valuations in these startups. For this scam to be revealed so late shows how long many startups were able to get away from 'faking it'. [0] https://www.theguardian.com/media/2023/feb/23/ozy-media-founder-carlos-watson-arrested-fraud-charges https://www.theguardian.com/media/2023/feb/23/ozy-media-foun... [1] https://abcnews.go.com/US/startup-founders-alleged-175-million-fraud-spotlights-inequality/story?id=98470145 https://abcnews.go.com/US/startup-founders-alleged-175-milli... [2] https://www.cnbc.com/2022/10/14/nikola-nkla-founder-trevor-milton-found-guilty-of-fraud-.html https://www.cnbc.com/2022/10/14/nikola-nkla-founder-trevor-m...
  - malermeister 3y ago
    Can you name a concrete counterexample of a crypto venture that provides actual value to society?
    - rvz 3y ago
      Yes. Moneygram, Circle and Stellar launched and aid program (Stellar Aid) that allows near instant, very low-fee and cross-border P2P payments worldwide to those in need of it. [0] [0] https://thefintechtimes.com/stellar-aid-assist-creates-new-relief-fund-delivery-platform-for-ukraine https://thefintechtimes.com/stellar-aid-assist-creates-new-r...

konschubert 3y ago

I do not understand how this is supposed to prevent sibyl attacks? How do they prevent fake virtual iris scanning devices from pretending that they scanned a person that doesn’t actually exist? Or is the idea that sama is will run a centralised private identity system that aims to replace government identity management? Then why do you need crypto? Are they trying to replace proof of stake/proof of work with “proof of being a human being”? I don’t see how the iris scanning achieves this? I think it’s fundamentally impossible. If you don’t have a centralised authority verifying identity, the best thing you can get is peer-to-peer federated identity verification like PGP. But with this, identity is relative, as in “I trust a guy who trusts a gal who says this person is real”.

aionaiodfgnio 3y ago
Of course it will be centralized! There is no cryptocurrency that isn't. Cryptocurrencies can't scale without centralization, and there's no way to interface with the real world without some sort of trust.
espadrine 3y ago
The signup module is indeed a centralized system, which then records the new registration on a distributed ledger (which only someone with Worldcoin’s private key can do). From there, payment operations are done distributed on Ethereum / L2. The signup process is always a sensitive part of a cryptosystem, and open network membership is not always expected (for instance, CBDCs, Ripple…). There is certainly a philosophical argument to be made against closed membership, since it can disadvantage people that struggle for access, and lets the company discriminate in the future once they get a stronghold, which can be especially problematic considering the primary value of human-uniqueness is to restrict voting to an in-group whose bounds historically have been heavily argued even in non-repressive regimes. But it seems unlikely to become predominant. Some people have prosthetic eyes; I would be hard-pressed to imagine, say, Apple releasing an iPhone that is inaccessible to a population in such a significant way.
- konschubert 3y ago
  If you have centralised signup and identity you may as well run a Postgres DB or a git repo. It could still be a cool idea, but I don’t get how this needs crypto?

aionaiodfgnio 3y ago

This is a grift I don't understand. Obviously there is no legitimate reason for it to exist, but what is the illegitimate reason? How do the people behind this scheme expect to benefit? Is it a good old fashioned pump and dump? Do they somehow expect to profit from the biometric data? Do they expect to gain political power by setting up this quasi-government? I don't get it.

fvdessen 3y ago

Once again it is completely ignored that the whole online identity thing is a solved problem, in the EU. Millions of Europeans use eIDAS apps daily and enjoy single-sign-on across EU websites, can sign docs, make payments etc. etc. And there’s no privacy issues thanks to the GDPR, which it turns out is not just about cookie popups The tech is there, it works today, without crypto bullshit, and it is extremely useful. But since nobody became a billionaire out of it, nobody talks about it

zajio1am 3y ago
Are eIDAS identity services even interoperable for private service providers? AFAIK public service providers use national portals that aggregate identity providers, but private service providers must have a contract with identity providers. > But since nobody became a billionaire out of it, nobody talks about it Here in CZ, the law was setup in a way that gives advantage to banks compared to other identity providers, these banks created one consortium, which is essentially monopolistic provider, with ~80 % market share, asking private services providers significant money for identity services.
nmat 3y ago
Reminds how US centric a lot of crypto companies are. An advantage of crypto that often comes up is “instant and cheap money transfers”. In the UK, I transfer money to my friends instantaneously and for free using just my bank account.
- AnthonyMouse 3y ago
  > In the UK, I transfer money to my friends instantaneously and for free using just my bank account. You can do the same thing in the US. The problem is that businesses can't easily do this without collecting bank routing information from customers, which is effectively "secret" because it allows anyone to debit money directly from their bank account, so they're reluctant to provide it. What's needed is a low- or no-fee system for requesting payments from someone without collecting any secrets from them. The technology to do this is not hard -- use public key cryptography, or just require the customer to approve merchants before they can make debits. But the customer's bank has little incentive to implement this because the customer won't choose a different bank over it and meanwhile the banks own the credit processing networks charging the high fees. Which is why people are looking for an external solution.

lolinder 3y ago

> While Worldcoin may have developed an algorithm that reliably distinguishes unique irises among its test pool, it’s not clear that it will work with a pool orders of magnitude larger. This is a really key problem. The main application of biometrics today is in cell phones, and for those we operate on the assumption that we're trying to distinguish between the authorized user and a quite small pool of non-authorized people who will have physical access to the device: family members, friends, co-workers, and the occasional thief. This threat profile allows the biometric algorithm to err on the side of usability—it's more important that the algorithm consistently open the phone when shown the user's fingerprint or face than it is that there be no other human being on the planet who could open it. Worldcoin has a very different threat profile, and it's not obvious to me that is possible to have a usable biometrics system (with an acceptably low false negative rate) that also has absolutely zero risk of hash collisions when the pool of unique people you need to distinguish is the size of the entire planet.

kibwen 3y ago
> the pool of unique people you need to distinguish is the size of the entire planet Not merely the size of the entire planet. If they hope that this scheme lasts in perpetuity, it will need to distinguish between all individuals who will ever be born.
panarky 3y ago
If the iris hash function produces a false negative, does the owner of the iris lose access to their assets?
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
remcob 3y ago
This is essentially the Birthday paradox. You need a quadratically better false match rate to deduplicate than to authenticate. It’s also why Worldcoin went with Irises (highest entropy among biometrics), custom hardware, custom optics and an in-house trained algorithm.

fredgrott 3y ago

I have a Sam Altman story... I did a pre-interview to work for one of Sam's first startups, the mobile one that had the date via GPS idea. Turned down going beyond the pre-interview due to concept and funding combination not being compatible with reality. You have to remember at that point in time Mobile OEMs were locking down GPS access through apps and Mobile Operators were attempting to pretend they were VCs. Not every slide deck that gets money is a good slide deck!!

latchkey 3y ago
This is a story about Sam?
- optimalsolver 3y ago
  https://www.reuters.com/technology/openais-sam-altman-launches-worldcoin-crypto-project-2023-07-24/ https://www.reuters.com/technology/openais-sam-altman-launch...
  - latchkey 3y ago
    And? I was talking to the op about their story... don't need a link to a worldcoin announcement, thanks.
    - optimalsolver 3y ago
      This is an article about Worlcoin, Sam Altman's pet project, and OP is sharing an anecdote about Sam Altman. Not sure why you find this so confusing, but I'll be happy to walk you through it slowly.
      - qwerasdf5 3y ago
        It's not clear whether or not he talked to Sam Altman in his/her "pre-interview". If I had a pre-interview for a job at Amazon, does that mean I have a Jeff Bezos story?

lucasyvas 3y ago

It disappoints me to see anyone discussing this on technical merits when the whole thing is a laughably bad idea. It really just needs to be buried into the ground before it gets started.

lawn 3y ago
Smart people missing the forest for the trees. Nothing new, but still disappointing.
wmf 3y ago
The world would be significantly worse off if it just ran on your gut instincts. In the particular case of Worldcoin it's still bad once you understand the details but that's just luck.
- AlexandrB 3y ago
  I feel like the world would be better off if VC money was funneled into more local small businesses and "lifestyle" startups, not 100m+ "moonshots" like this. Unfortunately that doesn't "scale".

spaceman_2020 3y ago

This is pretty much true for almost all of crypto.

kgeist 3y ago

>there is no “password reset” when it comes to iris data This is the most critical part, I think. If my Iris scan is leaked (which is not hard to do, from modified Orbs, similar to credit card skimmers, to mobsters scanning people's irises under threat of death), my identity will be stolen and I can't do anything about it. Do they have at least some sort of 2FA?

hef19898 3y ago
They didn't have it neither in Demolotion Man, and it worked great!
wmf 3y ago
I think their plan is that if you re-scan your eyes the system revokes any previous (sold/stolen) identities associated with your eyes and issues you a new one, like a password reset process. This doesn't help if someone can use a leaked hash to trigger the reset process though.
- treyd 3y ago
  Is there any reasonable way to make this work that doesn't involve the company keeping plaintext copies of Iris scans and/or retaining the ability to arbitrarily reset account keys on the ledger (such that users have to trust them to behave honestly)? What happens if a modified Orb is used to dumo the scans and then later trigger a fake reset?
93po 3y ago
Modified orbs won't be able to add iris scans
tim333 3y ago
(Scanned yesterday). I don't think this is about identity. You don't have to give any when you scan - you can claim to Mickey Mouse for all they care. It's more a way to distribute shitcoins evenly.

voz_ 3y ago

Death to crypto, let it end already.

latchkey 3y ago

A lot of people here are questioning how this works. Vitalik went through a pretty good analysis of the mechanics recently [0]. What is it with founders named Sam who are scammers? [0] https://vitalik.eth.limo/general/2023/07/24/biometric.html https://vitalik.eth.limo/general/2023/07/24/biometric.html

Wormable 3y ago
[flagged]
- latchkey 3y ago
  It was a reference to SBF and had nothing to do with being anti-semitic.
- JumpCrisscross 3y ago
  > Sam[uel] is merely a common Jewish first name This shouldn’t be downvoted. I have heard OP’s joke. That it could come across as anti-Semitic, despite almost never being intended that way, is a good heads up.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]

qingcharles 3y ago

This image (FTA) is straight out of some insane dystopian nightmare: https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fded02b83-4a82-4616-b44c-c9c457c4a33e_1339x886.jpeg https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_pr... That the photo represents a real event in real reality is absurd o_O

hef19898 3y ago
Some people take cyberpunk as entertainment, some as a paraody, some as a warning, some as all of the above. And some take it as blue print worth pursueing. EDIT: The while premise of needing a nin-centralized wax of confirming ones identity is, at its core, deeply un-demicratic. As of bow, government issued documentation confirms anyones identiy. These governments can be democratic, and are. Puting a different system in place, controlled by some tech-billionaire-liberitarian, is as dytopian as it gets. So of course VCs are investing like hell in it.
- WeylandYutani 3y ago
  I've always seen libertarians not as pursuers of freedom but as people who want to replace the police with a private security force. Libertarians want to live in a world where they are accountable to no-one. It's the ultimate conclusion of capitalism: wealth makes right. Serfdom and (sexual) exploitation for those of us who are not rich.
- ttepasse 3y ago
  @AlexBlechman on TwiX had this tweet some years ago: Sci-Fi Author: In my book I invented the Torment Nexus as a cautionary tale Tech Company: At long last, we have created the Torment Nexus from classic sci-fi novel Don't Create The Torment Nexus
  - qingcharles 3y ago
    I soiled myself laughing. Thank you.
- 3y ago

pitahat 3y ago

I agree with certain sentiments, especially whether there is an actual product market fit for this, but the tech analysis here is sloppy. Molly is a crypto sceptic so suffers from confirmation bias.

lolinder 3y ago
Can you provide a better critique than a single-word dismissal ("sloppy")? Molly is a crypto skeptic, but that fact alone doesn't make her analysis sloppy. If you have some insights into where she's wrong, please do share.
thesausageking 3y ago
Yeh, I have a lot of problems with Worldcoin but this isn't a great post on it or the issues. You can tell she went in with the intention to write something for an audience that hates crypto and wants to be told they're right. As a comparison, Vitalik wrote a great, even handed analysis: https://vitalik.ca/general/2023/07/24/biometric.html https://vitalik.ca/general/2023/07/24/biometric.html

SkyMarshal 3y ago

Lots of good analysis here, with the main flaw (imho) coming in last*. The WC team may be book smart, but not experienced or wise, especially in building complex systems with high integrity and assurance. They cut too many corners, take too many intellectual shortcuts, assume away too many hard problems, minimize important constraints inherent in their chosen architecture, and clearly haven't really thought it all through. Wishful thinking is no substitute for sound engineering. All red flags of a project doomed to fail. *> A black market for Worldcoin accounts has already emerged [1] in Cambodia, Nigeria, and elsewhere, where people are being paid to sign up for a World ID and then transfer ownership to buyers elsewhere — many of whom are in China, where Worldcoin is restricted. There is no ongoing verification process to ensure that a World ID continues to belong to the person who signed up for it, and no way for the eyeball-haver to recover an account that is under another person’s control. Worldcoin acknowledges that they have no clue how to resolve the issue: “Innovative ideas in mechanism design and the attribution of social relationships will be necessary.“ The lack of ongoing verification also means that there is no mechanism by which people can be removed from the program once they pass away, but perhaps Worldcoin will add survivors’ benefits to its list of use cases and call that a feature. Relatively speaking, scanning your iris and selling the account is fairly benign. But depending on the popularity of Worldcoin, the eventual price of WLD, and the types of things a World ID can be used to accomplish, the incentives to gain access to others’ accounts could become severe. Coercion at the individual or state level is absolutely within the realm of possibility, and could become dangerous. [1]:https://web3isgoinggreat.com/?id=sam-altmans-worldcoin-project-incentivizes-a-black-market-for-biometric-data-taken-from-people-in-developing-nations https://web3isgoinggreat.com/?id=sam-altmans-worldcoin-proje...

_9omd 3y ago
I can’t imagine how naive you have to be to not see account selling as a massive problem. Especially when your plan is to first onboard users in poor countries. Why would these people do anything other than signup and immediately sell their accounts, for what may amount to a month or two of normal pay, just for waiting in line and getting scanned. I find it crazy that they claimed their system is Sybil resistant when it had this most obvious flaw. Maybe they don’t really give a crap and just wanted to collect that sweet sweet VC money.

blackle 3y ago

If you're trying to build a world where a person's iris is their unique proof of personhood, then you are building a world where people without eyes are not people. I cannot see a way around this.

antigonemerlin 3y ago
Add it onto the list of "falsehoods programmers believe in". https://github.com/kdeldycke/awesome-falsehood https://github.com/kdeldycke/awesome-falsehood

aeurielesn 3y ago

> He is selling the antidote to the poison he is, coincidentally, also selling. The irony.

_9omd 3y ago

Remember, Sam Altman is the guy who made open AI into closed AI, and he’s the cofounder of this. If you think he has any intent of making this an open decentralized system that benefits people you’re likely mistaken.

JohnFen 3y ago
It was Sam Altman being behind WorldCoin that made me very suspicious of OpenAI when I learned he was involved with that, too.
tarruda 3y ago
I would not trust someone who claims they are working on a project that benefits people. I would be less suspicious of someone working on a selfish project that might benefit people as a side effect.
- 93po 3y ago
  Sam Altman's work on OpenAI is hard to characterize as selfish when he owns none of it and doesn't get paid for it.
  - Atotalnoob 3y ago
    He is the CEO, and according to levels.fyi, they give out stock grants. Why on earth would the CEO not get a stock grant when the entry level SWEs do?
    - ascorbic 3y ago
      He's said that he doesn't take any stock. I don't know why so many people thing this is strange. He's already immensely rich. While this role might not make him richer, but it does give him huge amounts of power and influence.
      - blitzar 3y ago
        Richness comes in many flavours other than $$$s. As you point out huge amounts of power and influence - something money cant buy.

gcatalfamo 3y ago

I am going to be downvoted to death, but it is clear from last year events that Sam Altman is truly that kind of "Blade Runner/Robocop(1)"-like antagonist character that has a narcissistic drive to destroy the world just so he can show everybody he is saving it. (1) Pick your 80's Sci-Fi movie dystopia that fits here.

93po 3y ago
It seems unfair to attack someone so personally without providing neutrally presented evidence to support it
- monkaiju 3y ago
  I feel theres plenty of evidence... he's a super rich public figure known to lie to get traction on his projects. He doesn't need your protection
  - 93po 3y ago
    It's not about me protecting some billionaire that doesn't give a shit about me. It's about protecting reasonable discussion and trying to keep discussion in reality instead of it just being an echo chamber of "ai man bad". If I just wanted to see outrage and shitting on someone without substance I'd go read reddit and twitter. Plenty of evidence... of which still none is being presented neutrally.
    - ShamelessC 3y ago
      There is a bunch of evidence in the article we're commenting on. Good faith assumption that people have all read the article before commenting is (supposedly) a premise of HN's culture. In practice, many people who comment are responding solely to a comment or to the title presented.
      - koonsolo 3y ago
        I read the article, didn't see any evidence of the above claims. Still waiting for such evidence...

happytiger 3y ago

This is the most dystopian project I’ve ever seen and a total wolf in sheep’s clothing. Hell it might better called a wolf in wolf’s clothing. I find it difficult that this kind of project is attached to Altman — it’s not a good look for someone playing around with controversial human replacement technologies capable of insane global control and manipulation. Let’s invent a crypto that tracks every human on the planet using their immutable characteristics. It’ll be fine. What can go wrong? This information won’t be used inappropriately I’m sure. Never trust a rich person who wraps themselves in the cloak of human interest or says they are “of the people.” The establishment isn’t in the business of teaching you to disrupt it.

snapey 3y ago

If AI becomes sophisticated enough to take our jobs, then it should be capable of creating a system that solves UBI at scale.

JohnFen 3y ago
The problem with implementing UBI at scale isn't a technological one, it's a sociopolitical one. I don't see how an AI can be of much help there.

jowea 3y ago

Anyone knows why is it valued at billions? Where is the profit to stockholders supposed to come from? And value for the cryptocoin?

nmfisher 3y ago
I buy 0.0001% of your company for $1000. Congrats, your company is now "valued" at 1 billion dollars!

93po 3y ago

It's exhausting refuting everyone's misconceptions. I will simply say that most people, which probably includes you, don't understand the entirety of how this project works and you therefore make assumptions that are incorrect. It doesn't store biometric data. It doesn't store any information that is useful to anyone for any purpose. The only thing it can do is tell if your iris has been scanned before. That's it. It can't reproduce what your iris looks like and can't sell any useful data about it to anyone. It does in fact allow online activity with privacy and while remaining anonymous. There is no way to link accounts between sites unless you do so yourself. Yes, people will sell accounts. This is fine because it still solves the problem of people being able to make infinite accounts online at present. It still creates a barrier of entry for spam where there currently is often very little or none. Inauthentic behavior online will continue but not at the rampant pace it currently has. There's lots more I could say but I'm not going to change minds that aren't open to rational discussion and instead engage in the perpetual outrage machine that is social media and corporate news. If you have genuine curious questions that aren't easily answered by their website, feel free to ask and I will answer as best I can. I have no affiliation other than I'm working on a personal project with their API.

lolinder 3y ago
This honestly feels like you didn't even read the article and are responding to what you think it says. If I'm wrong I'd be happy to have you clarify why Molly is wrong, instead of just generally asserting that people misunderstand. > It doesn't store biometric data. She addresses this: they do in fact store the biometric scans if you opt in, and they strongly encourage you to opt in because if you don't you'll have to periodically reverify as they tweak the algorithm. > It doesn't store any information that is useful to anyone for any purpose. The only thing it can do is tell if your iris has been scanned before. That's it. It can't reproduce what your iris looks like and can't sell any useful data about it to anyone. As Molly points out, you're making a huge assumption that this number that uniquely identifies your iris isn't useful information to sell to someone (or for someone to hack). > Yes, people will sell accounts. This is fine because it still solves the problem of people being able to make infinite accounts online at present. It still creates a barrier of entry for spam where there currently is often very little or none. Inauthentic behavior online will continue but not at the rampant pace it currently has. This is where the project really needs to figure out what it's actually trying to do. If the goal is simply to reduce inauthentic behavior on the ETH chain, then it's possible that you are right that sale of accounts doesn't matter. But if the goal is to provide some sort of UBI system, the fact that it has no way to verify who is using the account after its initial creation is a huge huge problem that will lead to massive amounts of corruption and harm if they succeed at implementing the kind of worldwide UBI they're talking about. Just look at what happens to humanitarian aid that goes into territory controlled by warlords: that's what we're talking about. Again, Molly addresses this, so it feels like you didn't read her article.

great_psy 3y ago

Does anybody know if the actual iris information gets stored, or it’s just a hash of it ? Seems like there is no reason why the iris picture needs to be stored. But I’m not sure of the whole use case

psd1 3y ago
rtfa
JohnFen 3y ago
It's a hash. But that doesn't eliminate the serious privacy issues with it.
- great_psy 3y ago
  Ok, Assuming the it’s a well known hash it seems a bit more secure. Can’t do any searches on people based on the iris.

Dig1t 3y ago

Well today I learned that the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project exists. Pretty awesome.