A brief analysis of Worldcoin: what is it? how to use? How to protect privacy? what are the risks

At present, most people are relatively unfamiliar with Ord iris recognition and the related workflow behind it. This is not only innovation, but also doubts and challenges.

Written by: GaryMa Wu said blockchain

The blessing of traffic words such as "OpenAI founder", "super luxury financing background", "everyone gets airdrop" has attracted a lot of attention for Worldcoin.

Worldcoin was founded by Sam Altman, the founder of OpenAI. Tools for Humanity, the development company behind it, recently announced the completion of a $115 million Series C round of financing, led by Blockchain Capital, with participation from a16z, Bain Capital Crypto and Distributed Global. In addition, in October 2021, Tools for Humanity raised US$25 million at a valuation of US$1 billion, and well-known investment institutions such as a16z, Coinbase, Multicoin Capital, and 1confirmation participated in the investment.

The power of the Internet lies in its powerful network utility, and now, under the foundation of the cryptocurrency and Web3 industry, users can also have control and ownership of the network.

However, there is currently no encrypted currency network that can be adopted on a large scale. If there is an encrypted network or a encrypted currency that is adopted by most people or even the world, then the network effect that this encrypted network can produce will be huge. Many of us Previously unimaginable applications are possible.

This is the vision of Worldcoin: a cryptocurrency economic network with global mass adoption.

In terms of functions, Worldcoin is currently divided into three major modules:

1. World ID: A privacy-protecting decentralized identity protocol that can prove the uniqueness and authenticity of users without disclosing private data such as user names and emails.
2. Worldcoin (WLD): Token distributed to people for free, exerting utility governance value.
3. World App: A fully self-hosted official ecological wallet that allows payments, purchases and transfers worldwide using Worldcoin Token, digital assets and traditional currencies.

Of course, in practical applications, these three modules are not independent and separated, but more of a state of integration and integration, which is only mentioned here for the convenience of conceptual elaboration.

So how to quickly establish the network effect of Worldcoin? Worldcoin's solution is to distribute Tokens to all real users. Everyone can receive a certain share of Worldcoin Token for free, and the challenge here is to solve the problem of "human-machine verification" without infringing on user privacy.

To this end, Worldcoin has developed a biometric device Orb (scanning iris), which helps users register by capturing photos of the user's iris and converting them into a string of iris codes; at the same time, the service will not save or upload the user's eyes. Photos of the iris, the final output saves only the generated iris code.

The specific workflow in practice is roughly as follows:

Register WorldID Process

• The user downloads the World App wallet and generates a Semaphore key pair (which can be understood as a World ID key pair).
• The user presents the QR code of the key pair public key to Orb to scan, and scans the iris of a real person at the same time.
• Orb sends message data including public key and user iris code to registration orderer node.
• Register the sequencer node to verify the message data, check whether the iris data exists, if not, save the public key and iris code, and the registration is successful.

Get Worldcoin Token

• The user's World App wallet will generate a wallet address locally.
• The wallet will also generate a zero-knowledge proof message and send it to the sorter to verify that the user does have its World ID without associating the wallet address with the World ID, and send an airdrop Token.

It is worth mentioning that by adopting ZKPs technology, the Worldcoin account can be realized not to be associated with the relevant data of Orb. When a user uses their World ID, a zero-knowledge proof (ZKP) prevents third parties from knowing the person's wallet public key or tracking the person across applications. The ZKP also protects the use of World ID from being tied to any biometric data or personal iris code.

WorldID

It can be said that the World ID protocol is currently the core of the Worldcoin ecology. As a set of decentralized identity protocols that protect privacy and do not collect and store user biometric information, at this stage when we are about to enter a new era of AI, solving the problem of man-machine proof is more important than ever. More important than ever, World ID could play a vital role. The human-machine proof problem is only one of the most basic use cases of World ID. Considering its Sybil defense feature, World ID can be applied in governance, identity verification, reputation system, etc.

WorldcoinToken（WLD）

At present, there is not much information about Worldcoin Token (WLD). It is understood that the total number of WLD is 10 billion, and the distribution is as follows:

• A fixed supply of 8 billion Tokens is provided to the community;
• 1 billion will be used to fund the Worldcoin protocol long-term, including developer grants;
• 1 billion will be provided to the contributor agreement of the agreement, the investor;

Worldcoin Network: Ethereum L2 & OP super chain

Worldcoin's current positioning of its own encrypted network form is not to start from scratch, but to build an optimistic rollup L2 network based on the Ethereum mainnet to take advantage of the composability of the Ethereum network. It is worth mentioning that on May 11, Worldcoin officially announced its vision for the OP super chain.

Problems and Challenges

Some users may only have the impression of Worldcoin as an application that can receive airdropped tokens for free. Here we might as well regard Worldcoin as an OP super chain with a built-in wallet and identity protocol "inaccurately".

At present, what most people are relatively unfamiliar with is Ord iris recognition and the related workflow behind it. This is not only innovation, but also doubts and challenges:

• Whether offline pushes attract users to participate in Ord iris recognition can be implemented on a large scale: the feasibility of regional supervision and the resistance of individual users to this iris scanning biometric method. At present, Worldcoin has nearly 1.8 million registered users, mainly concentrated in Argentina, India, Spain and other countries.
• Long-term feasibility of iris code-related technologies: Let’s not discuss hypothetical issues such as Ord hardware, ZKP verification, etc. Consistency is also a potential hidden danger. (The current official response is that the iris codes in this case will be so similar that the system will judge them as the same iris, that is, the same person.)
• Iris code management: Based on the current information, the iris code data is uploaded to the registration sorter node, and these nodes are most likely to be run by the official at this stage. Due to the use of ZKP technology, the iris data (or World ID) does not It will be associated with the user's wallet address, so even if the iris data is leaked and stolen, it does not involve user privacy issues. Of course, there is an assumption of trust in official storage and ZKP technology applications.

Conclusion

The cryptocurrency industry has been chanting the slogan of "promoting mass adoption" for a long time. In any case, it is very gratifying for the cryptocurrency industry that Worldcoin is trying to break the circle with such a vision. At least it has a strong support team, at least It has a luxurious lineup of institutions, at least its Token is free.