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(Kitco News) - Worldcoin, a project that issues a unique digital ID to individuals based on a scan of their iris, continues to see a tumultuous roll-out as Kenyan police raided a warehouse belonging to the project in Nairobi on Saturday.
According to a local media report, police officers raided the warehouse, confiscated machines that are believed to contain data gathered by the firm, and transported them to the Directorate of Criminal Investigations headquarters for analysis.
Last week, Kenya’s interior ministry suspended Worldcoin activities in the country, saying, “relevant security, financial services and data protection agencies have commenced inquiries and investigations to establish the authenticity and legality” of Worldcoin activities. Interior Cabinet Secretary Kithure Kindiki said the company “is not registered as a legal entity in Kenya.”
Immaculate Kassait, the commissioner of Kenya's Office of Data Protection, said Tools for Humanity, the parent company of Worldcoin, failed to disclose the true intentions of the project when it registered, and the widespread attention the project received with its token launch prompted the government to take a closer look at the data being collected.
Around 350,000 Kenyans have already completed the signup process in return for $50 worth of the project’s WLD token. Worldcoin said it selected Kenya as the first African country to launch its platform because of their booming tech space and active cryptocurrency community, with more than four million Kenyans already trading crypto.
The Kenyan government is now looking to ensure that its citizens’ data is being protected and used in appropriate ways. “We must protect Kenyans from unregulated mining of their data while their use remains mysterious or unknown,” Kenyan Senator Kiprotich Arap Cherargei said last week.
Worldcoin sought to reassure individuals and governments that all user data is secure. “By default, iris images are promptly deleted by the Orb after the creation of the iris code – all without ever leaving the device,” they said.
Despite the company’s reassurance, many governments remain hesitant about the project and have raised concerns related to privacy and security as there is no way to establish the unique ID is actually held by a unique person.
The Kenyan Capital Markets Authority (CMA) said it was concerned about the ongoing registration and notified Kenyans that Worldcoin was not regulated in Kenya. Under Kenyan law, individuals have a right to not have any personal information unnecessarily required or revealed.
In response to the concerns voiced by the Kenyan government, Worldcoin insisted that all Kenyan regulations have been followed, and the project is now planning to implement crowd-control measures and collaborate with the government before resuming work.
Despite regulatory headwinds, Tiago Sada, head of product at Tools for Humanity, said the company expects to integrate its ‘World ID’ system with various platforms, projects, and government systems in the month ahead.
“Over the coming weeks and months — during the second half of the year — we expect to spend a lot more time helping companies set up these integrations,” he said.
Sada noted that governments, which are increasingly running into issues with ID verifications due to the availability of duplications and fakes on the black market, can also benefit from the service offered by World ID. “We’re not trying to replace a passport or driver’s license,” he said. “This is something that you can use in addition to that.”
He also touched on the rise of artificial intelligence, which he said would make building applications that are “bot-resistant” an even more challenging problem to solve.
“It is clear that the world needs and will need something like Worldcoin in the coming years,” he said. “We just hope that happens in a privacy-preserving decentralized, open-source, permissionless way.”
He added that while Worldcoin has “been approached by governments over the past few months inquiring about how the protocol works,” there is “no specific integration to announce right now.”
There are currently more than 1,500 orb stations collecting iris scans and issuing World IDs in various countries, including Indonesia, France, Japan, Germany, Spain and the UK.
Along with Kenyan authorities, the governments of Germany, France and the U.K. have also announced investigations into the platform, citing data privacy and security concerns.
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| ChatGPT founder Sam Altman's Worldcoin (WLD) token up 34% after launch |
While some reports suggested that signups have decreased following the launch of the WLD token on July 24, Worldcoin said that there has actually been an increase in both new user signups and engagement with the World App as news of the project spread.
“Weekly global World ID verifications more than doubled in the seven days following launch as additional Orbs were rolled out around the world,” they said in a statement released on Sunday. “There was a 3X increase in weekly active World App users and a more than 10X increase in weekly account creations in the seven days following launch.”
“In the days following the Worldcoin launch, World App downloads hit record highs around the world,” Tools for Humanity said. “Between January and July, World ID sign-ups went from one million to two million in less than half the time it took to reach the first million. Last week's 2X growth in weekly World ID sign-ups demonstrates a sustained increase in global demand for World ID as a standalone product.”
Claims made about the project's level of adoption remain difficult to verify in the absence of detailed information from Worldcoin showing the number of registered users and the amount of WLD distributed. Data provided by Etherscan shows that there are currently 5,483 WLD token holders on Ethereum and 452,450 WLD holders on Optimism, a layer-2 scaling solution for Ethereum.
Despite the claims of success on the user front, the price of WLD has seen little movement outside of the volatility the token experienced on the day of its launch and currently trades at $2.03, 22% off its high of $2.63.
WLD/USD Chart by TradingView
