Worldcoin (WLD)

Basics

• Based in:
• Started in / Announced on: 21-10-2021, but the Worldcoin concept and initiative have been in existence since 2019.
• Testnet: had done '18 months of beta testing'
• Mainnet release: 24-7-2023
• Iris scans using zk proofs (Semaphore) on Hubble optimistic rollup

Audits & Exploits

• Bug bounty program can be found [insert here].
• Had two audits, by Nethermind and Least Authority (28-7-2023).

Bugs/Exploits

• Worldcoin Bug allowed anyone to become an Orb Operator (7-8-2023).

Governance

• In a lengthy blog post (24-7-2023), Buterin argues that Orbs are hardware devices where backdoors could be installed into the system—allowing malicious manufacturers to create many bogus human identities. "If even one Orb manufacturer is malicious or hacked, it can generate an unlimited number of fake iris scan hashes, and give them World IDs,"

Token

Token Allocation

• From Bitcoin.com (25-7-2023):

"Currently, with 107 million WLD tokens circulating, the cryptocurrency’s distribution is highly concentrated and held by only a few entities. For instance, among the 164,195 unique addresses possessing WLD tokens, the top wallet controls a significant 63.29% of the entire supply. To illustrate this concentration further: the largest wallet holds 112,540,589 WLD, while the second largest wallet contains 32,488,727 tokens or 18.26% of all WLD. It’s reported that 75% of WLD will be allocated to the Worldcoin community; 10% is reserved for the Worldcoin team and advisors; an additional 10% is designated for the Worldcoin Foundation; and the remaining 5% is intended for early investors and strategic Worldcoin partners. Yet, the timeline for diluting the currently aggregated supply, along with the duration of its aggregation, hangs in the balance."

• When it got launched on OP stack (24-7-2023), it got ridiculed for it's 1% circulation:

"Worldcoin taking a page out of SBF Solana eco playbook, launching and pumping a microcap shitcoin with 1% of total supply in circulation. $22.8 billion fully diluted market cap."

• Distributed “fairly” yet the team gets 20% of the supply and every major VC is invested (24-10-2021).

Coin Distribution

• From Bitcoin.com (6-8-2023):

"The largest address commands a staggering 57.8604% of the supply, encompassing 103,494,839 WLD tokens, while the top 100 holders collectively wield ownership of 95.08%."

• From Bitcoin.com (25-7-2023):

"Currently, with 107 million WLD tokens circulating, the cryptocurrency’s distribution is highly concentrated and held by only a few entities. For instance, among the 164,195 unique addresses possessing WLD tokens, the top wallet controls a significant 63.29% of the entire supply. To illustrate this concentration further: the largest wallet holds 112,540,589 WLD, while the second largest wallet contains 32,488,727 tokens or 18.26% of all WLD. The third biggest WLD wallet possesses 8,722,407 coins, representing 4.9% of the circulating supply. Currently, the majority of WLD tokens are held by market makers and exchanges like Binance, Bybit, and the Optimism Gateway. Very few transfers have occurred since its inception — just 275,591 transactions have taken place since launch. Lots of which are “claim” transfers in the amount of 25 WLD per claim."

Technology

• Whitepaper can be found [insert here].
• Code can be viewed [insert here].

Implementations

• Built on: OP stack. Initially created on Ethereum, the token now utilizes the Optimism (OP) layer two blockchain.
• Programming language used: Rust (28-7-2023) with someone commenting:

"Unresolved issue: “The Worldcoin Protocol utilizes the BN254 curve in the proving system. In 2016, advances in number theory led to a lower security estimate for this curve. Specifically, its security is now considered to be around 96-bits. […] Even for applications that only need to remain secure until 2030, NIST requires a security level of at least 112-bits” Worldcoin stated that they plan to upgrade at an unspecified time. Is it right to conclude that the proofs of humanity minted until then will become invalid because their security level will not guarantee that they're not forged? Or will they be accepted based on their minting date?"

Transaction Details

• Capacity (TPS):
• Latency:

Privacy Method

• From Eric Wall (27-7-2023):

"if the worldcoin technology works as described, scanning your iris does not link your iris to your ”world id” nor your financial transactions. no pictures of your eyeball scans are stored anywhere (allegedly). a zkp is used to prove that you belong to the set of unlinked irisCodes (hash of your iris scan). assuming the anonymity set is large, you should be fine. these irisCodes do prevent you prevent you from signing up again, so we can assume that if someone hunted you down and force-scanned you with an orb, they could find out that you’ve been scanned before and that you likely have a world id. but they wouldn’t know which. and that’s actually about the extent of your taint. there’s a lot of rah rah about the fact that a *hash of your iris scan* is submitted from the orb to worldcoin *servers* (vs apple faceid which is allegedly all local). but no one is articulating which privacy vector this violates other than ”it allows worldcoin to identify previous signups from new”. there is however potentially an issue with the world id itself. worldcoin says that they don’t collect any data about you (no name, email) to allow you to make use of the world id. worldcoin has given some thought to this and allows you to generate some number of sub-accounts that cannot be linked to eachother or the world id. it’s on the app you’re using to decide how many different sub-accs you’re allowed to use with a single mother id (they can’t allow you to use infinite sub-accounts if they want to prevent botting). one important thing is that you can atleast generate a new sub-account/nym per service. there are other actions, like voting, where worldcoin supports locally generated zkps to prove that you’re a unique user, but doesn’t expose the world id or any subaccount. worldcoin says they have a ongoing research projects to further improve worldcoin id privacy to allow e.g. selective disclosures using zk. in order to trust worldcoin and orbs, you would need to understand zkps and trusted execution environments to even understand that what they’re claiming is possible. this is not an easy thing to understand and even if you understand that it is possible, you still need to trust that it is being implemented and implemented correctly. as far as i know, no one external is going around doing remote attestation on these orbs using open source software. that’s a design goal worldcoin has but not something they’ve delivered or had as a requirement on themselves to deliver before they started scanning 8 pairs of eyeballs per second in the global south. and how would it even work in practice? if we normalize a vc tech bro scanning your eyeballs and another tech bro sitting next to him saying ”it’s all good, i verified the TEE” we’re still vulnerable as a people since no one really understands these things."

Roadmap

• Can be found [Insert link here].

Usage

• From Decrypt (24-7-2023):

"The latest figures from Worldcoin suggest 1,500 Orbs will be available in 35 global cities as the year progresses—helping the total number of weekly registrations surge from 40,000 people a week to 200,000. Overall, it estimates that two million have already signed up for a World ID."

Pros and Cons

Cons

• In a lengthy blog post (24-7-2023), Buterin argues that an effective, reliable proof-of-personhood system, like Worldcoin, "seems very valuable," but warns there are big risks in the race to develop one:

1. "The first concern relates to privacy—and the act of scanning someone's iris. Buterin fears this could capture much more data than meets the eye, including a person's sex, ethnicity and even certain medical conditions.
2. Suggesting that sign-ups could plateau quickly, Buterin wrote: "While there are billions of smartphones, there are only a few hundred Orbs. Even with much higher-scale distributed manufacturing, it would be hard to get to a world where there's an Orb within five kilometers of everyone." There's nothing to stop a government from banning Orbs in their country—or using this technology to coerce citizens.
3. Orbs are hardware devices where backdoors could be installed into the system—allowing malicious manufacturers to create many bogus human identities. "If even one Orb manufacturer is malicious or hacked, it can generate an unlimited number of fake iris scan hashes, and give them World IDs,"
4. He believes an "unlimited amount of identities" could be generated if Orbs mistakenly approve the irises of AI-generated photographs or 3D prints of fake people. There's also a danger of someone selling on or renting their World ID to someone else—or losing it after a phone hacking."

• Wants you to scan your eyeballs to get tokens. Edward Snowden can explain why that is bad.
• From this tweet (24-10-2021):

"Let me sum up how bad @worldcoin is -Distributed “fairly” yet the team gets 20% of the supply and every major VC is invested -User acquisition model imitates that of a MLM (Herbalife) -Privacy policy permits them to give your data to 3rd parties -Name resembles a 2017 ICO scam"

Team, Funding and Partners

Team

• Full team can be found [here].
• Sam Altman, Max Novendstern, and Alex Blania from the San Francisco and Berlin-based Tools for Humanity.

Funding

• Blockchain Capital was one of the investors (9-2023).
• From this tweet (24-10-2021):

"Has funding from Andreesen Horowitz, 1confirmation, Coinbase Ventures, CoinFund, DCG, HASHED, Kenetic Capital, Multicoin, Three Arrows Capital, Reid Hoffman (co-founder of LinkedIn), SBF, Denis Nazarov, Jesse Walden, and the founders and early team members from Solana, multiple Ethereum projects, Polkadot and the Web3 Foundation and more."

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