ChatGPT's Sam Altman launches eyeball scanning crypto project Worldcoin

After years in development, Worldcoin, OpenAI chief Sam Altman's eyeball-scanning digital identity project, launched on Monday. The project seeks to find a solution for "distinguishing humans from AI online” by verifying users’ identities by scanning their eyes.  A cryptocurrency, also named Worldcoin,  and a payments app also form crucial parts of the project.

The Orb

Worldcoin deploys a small device, christened the Orb,  to scan people’s eyeballs to create a unique digital identity. That identity, or World ID, grants its holder “proof of personhood” in the Worldcoin jargon. The eye-scanning Orb provides users with a unique identity to verify they are real humans and not a bot.

Interested Individuals can download World App, a wallet software, and get their retina scanned by an Orb, to receive their World ID.

“Worldcoin is an attempt at global scale alignment,” the digital identity and crypto project said. “The journey will be challenging and the outcome is uncertain.”

 2 million users signed up for Worldcoin

More than 2 million users have signed up for Worldcoin during a beta period. On Monday, Worldcoin stated that it is now going to scale its eyeball-scanning operations across 20 countries. The cryptocurrency token has also been issued to eligible people taking part in the beta and is now tradable, the project added. The coin’s initial supply has been capped at 10 billion tokens, according to the project’s white paper.

Alex Blania, a cofounder of the project, stated that  Worldcoin hopes to build a “privacy-first, decentralized and maximally inclusive” way of addressing the need to prove a person is real, which is “no longer a topic of serious debate” in the age of AI.

The startup counts Andreessen Horowitz, Khosla Ventures and Reid Hoffman among its backers.