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(Kitco News) - Worldcoin (WLD) got off to a hot start when it began trading on Monday, but the controversial project that scans a person’s iris to create a unique digital identifier is now struggling to attract new users willing to complete the signup process and be entered into the Worldcoin database.
Prior to the token launch, Worldcoin boasted that it had surpassed 2 million World ID pre-signups during its beta phase from cities where the organization’s Orb biometric imaging devices are located, including Barcelona, Berlin, Buenos Aires, New York, Seoul, and Tokyo. “Overall, an average of over 40,000 individuals sign up for a verified World ID every week,” Wolrdcoin said.
Despite having iris scan locations set up in 20 countries and offering 25 WLD tokens as a reward, currently valued at $57.50, the project saw a drop-off in users interested in signing up for the platform shortly after the token launched.
A report from South China Morning Post indicates that the three Hong Kong Orb locations each registered 200 new users on the day of the launch, and this was the highest number of World ID signups across all global Orb stations.
According to Heatherm Huang, an Orb operator in Hong Kong and co-founder of the Hong Kong-based blockchain firm Measurable Data Token, the region’s 600 new signups accounted for more than half of all the new registrations across 20 countries, which totaled only 1000.
The tepid response after launch suggests that the general public’s concerns about the project remain unaddressed, with people adopting a wait-and-see approach to how the platform evolves over time.
A report from MIT also calls into question the way the company attracted the early on-boards, suggesting that the developers behind the project attracted the first million using deceptive marketing practices, collected more personal data than they acknowledged, and failed to obtain meaningful informed consent.
Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin, who holds a lot of sway within the cryptocurrency community, published a response to the project the day it launched that provided a rundown of the Worldcoin and World ID platform, discussed the challenges with proof of personhood protocols, and gave his suggestions on how to improve such systems moving forward.
“The problem of making a proof-of-personhood system that is effective and reliable, especially in the hands of people distant from the existing crypto community, seems quite challenging,” Buterin said. “It will likely take years to find a formula that works.”
The main issues with Worldcoin and proof of personhood identified by Buterin include “3D-printed fake people; the possibility of selling fake IDs; renting IDs; phone hacking; and government coercion to steal IDs.” He also highlighted the dangers of data centralization as Worldcoin will be the sole entity in control of user information.
“These are pretty serious weaknesses,” he said. “Some already have been addressed in existing protocols, others can be addressed with future improvements, and still others seem to be fundamental limitations.”
While Buterin highlighted the problems that exist with Worldcoin and other biometric ID platforms, he also said that proof of personhood will be needed moving forward as without it, ID verification would fall into the hands of a small group of controllers.
“The concept of proof-of-personhood in principle seems very valuable, and while the various implementations have their risks, not having any proof-of-personhood at all has its risks too: a world with no proof-of-personhood seems more likely to be a world dominated by centralized identity solutions, money, small closed communities, or some combination of all three,” he said. “I look forward to seeing more progress on all types of proof of personhood, and hopefully seeing the different approaches eventually come together into a coherent whole.”
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Worldcoin responded to these concerns by saying that the system ensures privacy because it doesn’t collect any personal information and all biometric images are processed fully locally on Orbs and are “destroyed unless a person explicitly requests to back up their data.”
It remains to be seen how the adoption of Worldcoin will progress, but the concept of combining proof of personhood with a digital token is likely to continue to be developed and integrated into society as the world moves toward a Web3 and artificial intelligence-powered internet.
“Using a native token to incentivize and onboard people to a network, thereby bootstrapping Metcalfe’s law, isn’t new,” said Michael Silberberg, Head of Investor Relations at AltTab Capital. “While the tokens might not accrue value, the value of a real non-transferable, and cryptographically secure identity is potent as it could reduce digital fraud, help bank the unbanked, and even reduce the number of times I have to convince robots I’m not a robot a day.”
