Worldcoin launched this fall with some impressive backers and an audacious goal: get a fair launched digital currency into the hands of 1 billion people by tying their retinal scans to a unique verified identity. They use zero knowledge cryptography to secure the identities on-chain, and an incentivized network of “Orb Operators” to onboard new users $10 at a time in return for looking into the metal scanners. The early results sounded impressive.

Look, I know this sounds bad.

Yes, it involves a metal iris-scanning orb built by the folks working on OpenAI.

Yes, the goal is to airdrop a new world currency and 20% is owned by wealthy seed backers.

Yes, the onboarding model relies on door-to-door techno-mormons getting paid $10 per convert willing to store their biometrics on these new devices.

Yes, the manufacturer’s name is undisclosed, and that could end poorly.

Yes, the orb does look like the death star on its side, but with a fresh wax, and an eye-scan eligible digital currency was also the currency of the galactic empire (I think).

But, what if it works?

As Balaji pointed out, “FaceID scans hundreds of millions of faces per day. Can we articulate a difference between that vs Worldcoin, or any similar opt-in technology for proof-of-human? If you run any service with more than a few trusted users, you’ll immediately discover the need for some kind of proof-of-human. Not necessarily the state’s old-fashioned and bureaucratic KYC impositions, but something. Otherwise you’ll have bots, frauds, trolls, fakes, etc.”

In his mind, and the minds of the backers, you want to be able to distinguish good users from bad ones, to protect community members’ identities and privacy while also powering the new pseudonymous economy. That means “Progressives discover that you can build stateless money. Libertarians discover that you then need to rebuild something much like a state: identity, reputation, anti-fraud, custody, trust, community...”

I haven’t been able to make up my mind because there will be second-order and third-order effects that we can’t anticipate (good and bad) if this early experiment is at all successful.

Worldcoin在今年秋天推出，有一些令人印象深刻的支持者和宏伟目标：将数字货币公平地推向10亿人，并将其视网膜扫描与独特的验证身份相结合。他们使用零知识密码学来保护链上的身份，并使用激励网络中的“Orb运营商”以每次10美元的价格吸引新用户，以便观察金属扫描仪。早期结果听起来令人印象深刻。

我知道这听起来很糟糕。

是的，它涉及由OpenAI工作人员建造的金属虹膜扫描仪。

是的，目标是空投一个新的世界货币，其中20％由富有的种子支持者拥有。

是的，登机模型依赖于门到门的技术摩门教徒，他们每个人都会得到10美元，只要愿意将其生物识别信息存储在这些新设备上。

是的，制造商的名称未公开，这可能会以不良的方式结束。

是的，该球看起来像倒置的死星，但经过一层新的蜡和一个眼部扫描合格的数字货币也是银河帝国的货币（我想）。

但是，如果它奏效了呢？

正如Balaji指出的那样，“FaceID每天扫描数亿张脸。我们能否说明与Worldcoin或任何类似的选择性技术之间的区别，用于人的证明？如果您使用的任何服务都有超过几个受信任的用户，则立即发现需要某种形式的人类证明。不一定是国家老式和繁琐的KYC规定，但是某些东西。否则，您将拥有机器人，欺诈，妖怪，伪造等。

在他的思想中，以及支持者的思想中，您希望能够区分好用户和坏用户，以保护社区成员的身份和隐私，同时推动新的匿名经济。这意味着“进步人士发现您可以建立无状态的货币。自由主义者发现您随后需要重建类似于国家的东西：身份，声誉，反欺诈，监护，信任，社区...”

我还无法做出决定，因为如果这个早期实验成功，我们无法预测第二和第三阶效应（好的和坏的）。