Your thoughts on World Coin (WLD)?

[aioc]

Also there are publicly available Iris datasets (from medical centers or government offices which used Iris scan as a form of biometric authentication) and what happens if World Coin, specially being backed by Sam Altman (who has a history of using copyrighted material for OpenAI's model training) uses those and those people don't benefit from that?

These are my thoughts or questions. I am really curious to here about your thoughts on this.

We've seen in futuristic movies how the characters are using their iris to access platforms and portals, so we can conclude that our iris is part of our unique identity, just like our thumbmark, so we are practically selling our identity, so this is the reason why this is ban on many countries. Now they are doing this to third world country where they can easily bribe people in exchange for iris scan.
Cryptocurrency should be about decentralization, and this World Coin is violating it.

[passwordnow]

Don’t like it & there’s zero chance I ever willingly allow anybody to use a scan of my retina for who even knows what. I mean everybody has a price but nobody is going to give me what I’d accept for such an invasion of my privacy. There are so many options in crypto to try & make money, you don’t need to stoop as low as WLD to do it.

Agreed. Or at least they have to do it in a way people think it's worth it. I don't know, maybe paying $1000 to each participant?

That will be an absolute hit if they're goig to pay with WLD worth of $1k for all of the scans that they will do. And I will even think about it if I'm going to do that or not but most likely, no. What they're paying currently isn't a lot and people who are desperate doing it probably don't have any money left and that's why they've done it. They are the people that have no choice at all and they're in need, and so after receiving the WLD rewards, they've dumped it asap for them to use the money however they want it to be and for any use they can.

[prp-e]

Also there are publicly available Iris datasets (from medical centers or government offices which used Iris scan as a form of biometric authentication) and what happens if World Coin, specially being backed by Sam Altman (who has a history of using copyrighted material for OpenAI's model training) uses those and those people don't benefit from that?

These are my thoughts or questions. I am really curious to here about your thoughts on this.

We've seen in futuristic movies how the characters are using their iris to access platforms and portals, so we can conclude that our iris is part of our unique identity, just like our thumbmark, so we are practically selling our identity, so this is the reason why this is ban on many countries. Now they are doing this to third world country where they can easily bribe people in exchange for iris scan.
Cryptocurrency should be about decentralization, and this World Coin is violating it.

Well it's not that futuristic. We currently have iris based authentication but since the tech is expensive, it's not widely used (like the face scan or fingerprint). Each person's iris has a unique cellular structure and this is what they're supposedly turning to code.

Don’t like it & there’s zero chance I ever willingly allow anybody to use a scan of my retina for who even knows what. I mean everybody has a price but nobody is going to give me what I’d accept for such an invasion of my privacy. There are so many options in crypto to try & make money, you don’t need to stoop as low as WLD to do it.

Agreed. Or at least they have to do it in a way people think it's worth it. I don't know, maybe paying $1000 to each participant?

That will be an absolute hit if they're goig to pay with WLD worth of $1k for all of the scans that they will do. And I will even think about it if I'm going to do that or not but most likely, no. What they're paying currently isn't a lot and people who are desperate doing it probably don't have any money left and that's why they've done it. They are the people that have no choice at all and they're in need, and so after receiving the WLD rewards, they've dumped it asap for them to use the money however they want it to be and for any use they can.

I can understand how desperate people can get over not having money and do anything for that. I witnessed a Telegram group dedicated to people who got around $0.05 for solving CAPTCHAs. Honestly I guess that is a better way of making money for two obvious reasons. First, that is not putting you in danger of identity theft and second, most of those people are automating CAPTCHA solving so they can reach $10-$15 a day which can be a good number in some of those bad economies.

[o48o]

Worldcoin is owned by the CEO of OpenAI, Sam Altman. The idea is very unique but the idea of retina scam draws a lot of controversies. Also the world citizenship was not possible either.

https://time.com/6300522/worldcoin-sam-altman/

I don't think it is a very active project right now. I don't see much traction out there for Worldcoin. I may be wrong though! But I honestly don't think it will come back life ever again from its current state.

Because why would it get traction? Their iris collection violates GDPR and that alone kills the whole idea. They didn't thought the privacy issues trough and i am amazed that it went anywhere from the design phase.

I honestly don't even think that idea was unique. They just thought it would be unique because it's never been done. And only reason it's never been done because it's a horrible idea. If a government would want that data, people would be outraged, but those people would give that same data to private company for money? And i am sure that Sam Altman had a think tank and paid lawyers to look everything trough before launch. So how bad were these paid lawyers and why an earth anyone thought this was a good idea? Maybe this went trough just because of greed?

[prp-e]

Worldcoin is owned by the CEO of OpenAI, Sam Altman. The idea is very unique but the idea of retina scam draws a lot of controversies. Also the world citizenship was not possible either.

https://time.com/6300522/worldcoin-sam-altman/

I don't think it is a very active project right now. I don't see much traction out there for Worldcoin. I may be wrong though! But I honestly don't think it will come back life ever again from its current state.

Because why would it get traction? Their iris collection violates GDPR and that alone kills the whole idea. They didn't thought the privacy issues trough and i am amazed that it went anywhere from the design phase.

I honestly don't even think that idea was unique. They just thought it would be unique because it's never been done. And only reason it's never been done because it's a horrible idea. If a government would want that data, people would be outraged, but those people would give that same data to private company for money? And i am sure that Sam Altman had a think tank and paid lawyers to look everything trough before launch. So how bad were these paid lawyers and why an earth anyone thought this was a good idea? Maybe this went trough just because of greed?

This is my theory and it seems like a conspiracy theory (maybe it is, not sure).
Sam Altman Knowingly started the world project because he knew it will result in bad PR or in better words terrible PR and these silicon valley billionaires are mostly followers of the thought no publicity is bad publicity.

[TastyChillySauce00]

Simplir, they are not aware that their data can be used for crime in the future, they only see short -term benefits without being able to see long -term risks.

The long term risk really isn't worth the $50 they receive.

There's big fat chance that the datas will be used for something, they aren't giving free money for nothing.
Just imagine if there's data leak and our retina scan is floating on the internet can be used by bad actor to do something that breaks the law.

[Akbarkoe]

Simplir, they are not aware that their data can be used for crime in the future, they only see short -term benefits without being able to see long -term risks.

The long term risk really isn't worth the $50 they receive.

There's big fat chance that the datas will be used for something, they aren't giving free money for nothing.
Just imagine if there's data leak and our retina scan is floating on the internet can be used by bad actor to do something that breaks the law.

That's what I fear most about this project because they are taking data on a global scale and if the basis is strong enough where fingerprints are a problem then one retina scan becomes proof of verification to do something with finances or anything that is against the law or takes away our rights.

It is important to understand why people give away money for free without working, this is something that needs to be considered, there is always a motive for people out there to give away money for free for their own interests.

[o48o]

This is my theory and it seems like a conspiracy theory (maybe it is, not sure).
Sam Altman Knowingly started the world project because he knew it will result in bad PR or in better words terrible PR and these silicon valley billionaires are mostly followers of the thought no publicity is bad publicity.

Well it seems like a conspiracy theory in a way as it wouldn't make sense either.

It's not the failed part of this that created brand awareness. It was the promise of tokens that created the hype, which has fallen with the price of those tokens.

Sam Altman has good publicity already as head of OpenAI, and being in the center of hype, why he would intentionally create something that he knows to be a failure? It doesn't create any controversy people would be talking about (which is the point of "any publicity is good publicity"). The fact that some people give their personal data away for money isn't a controversy, it's just about rich man exploiting poor people.

He didn't benefit from this. For people following, he just looks like a chump now and therefore people will think twice, to fund something designed by him in the future.

[passwordnow]

That will be an absolute hit if they're goig to pay with WLD worth of $1k for all of the scans that they will do. And I will even think about it if I'm going to do that or not but most likely, no. What they're paying currently isn't a lot and people who are desperate doing it probably don't have any money left and that's why they've done it. They are the people that have no choice at all and they're in need, and so after receiving the WLD rewards, they've dumped it asap for them to use the money however they want it to be and for any use they can.

I can understand how desperate people can get over not having money and do anything for that. I witnessed a Telegram group dedicated to people who got around $0.05 for solving CAPTCHAs. Honestly I guess that is a better way of making money for two obvious reasons. First, that is not putting you in danger of identity theft and second, most of those people are automating CAPTCHA solving so they can reach $10-$15 a day which can be a good number in some of those bad economies.

No doubt that the captcha work is way better than giving your retina for some WLD that the receivers would have to sell it asap on its market price if they need the money. Yeah right, there is no risk in that and their retina details are kept safe because they don't have to give it if they are only for the captcha jobs. But as for the WLD foundation, they're trying to make a huge database with all of these details piled up on it and will merge with a global record that they can use for anything that they want to do, as they say for some services but we can never know what's next to it.

[cizanigh]

World Coin’s idea is interesting, but scanning people’s eyes feels risky. Who owns the eye data? What if it gets used in bad ways?

Also, why do the people who scan get rewards, but not the people scanned? That doesn’t seem fair.

I think it needs more clear rules to protect people’s privacy.

[prp-e]

This is my theory and it seems like a conspiracy theory (maybe it is, not sure).
Sam Altman Knowingly started the world project because he knew it will result in bad PR or in better words terrible PR and these silicon valley billionaires are mostly followers of the thought no publicity is bad publicity.

Well it seems like a conspiracy theory in a way as it wouldn't make sense either.

It's not the failed part of this that created brand awareness. It was the promise of tokens that created the hype, which has fallen with the price of those tokens.

Sam Altman has good publicity already as head of OpenAI, and being in the center of hype, why he would intentionally create something that he knows to be a failure? It doesn't create any controversy people would be talking about (which is the point of "any publicity is good publicity"). The fact that some people give their personal data away for money isn't a controversy, it's just about rich man exploiting poor people.

He didn't benefit from this. For people following, he just looks like a chump now and therefore people will think twice, to fund something designed by him in the future.

Well, OpenAI is cool and made the good publicity of course. And they also used it to collect lots of data (remember how that GPT Image model of theirs turned everything into anime?) so a better phrasing of my supposed conspiracy theory could be a mindset. Sam could collect a lot of data in many different forms through ChatGPT (PDFs people upload and ask, images from calories counting apps, images people want to edit, etc.) and the mindset is once we collected the data we can expand it to more sensitive data.
The mindset is not wrong though. But a PDF containing nonsense about my startup idea is not really a form of data causing concerns in me, an excel file containing menu of a local café is the same, not really a concerning matter and OpenAI (and all other companies in the space) can use that data to enhance their models on different data formats.
The concerning data is the biometric data, government issued IDs or similar stuff. I use my fingerprint to unlock my personal laptop. I am a little bit concerned because this laptop is connected to the internet and also shares a lot of data through my Apple ID with Apple. I hope I could have explained what was in my mind in best way possible.

That will be an absolute hit if they're goig to pay with WLD worth of $1k for all of the scans that they will do. And I will even think about it if I'm going to do that or not but most likely, no. What they're paying currently isn't a lot and people who are desperate doing it probably don't have any money left and that's why they've done it. They are the people that have no choice at all and they're in need, and so after receiving the WLD rewards, they've dumped it asap for them to use the money however they want it to be and for any use they can.

I can understand how desperate people can get over not having money and do anything for that. I witnessed a Telegram group dedicated to people who got around $0.05 for solving CAPTCHAs. Honestly I guess that is a better way of making money for two obvious reasons. First, that is not putting you in danger of identity theft and second, most of those people are automating CAPTCHA solving so they can reach $10-$15 a day which can be a good number in some of those bad economies.

No doubt that the captcha work is way better than giving your retina for some WLD that the receivers would have to sell it asap on its market price if they need the money. Yeah right, there is no risk in that and their retina details are kept safe because they don't have to give it if they are only for the captcha jobs. But as for the WLD foundation, they're trying to make a huge database with all of these details piled up on it and will merge with a global record that they can use for anything that they want to do, as they say for some services but we can never know what's next to it.

And in my searches, I only found that only the hardware part of their scanner devices are open sourced. The software is closed source and we do not know how they're processing retina scans.

World Coin’s idea is interesting, but scanning people’s eyes feels risky. Who owns the eye data? What if it gets used in bad ways?

Also, why do the people who scan get rewards, but not the people scanned? That doesn’t seem fair.

I think it needs more clear rules to protect people’s privacy.

Yeah, these are my points. You hit the bullseye.

[passwordnow]

No doubt that the captcha work is way better than giving your retina for some WLD that the receivers would have to sell it asap on its market price if they need the money. Yeah right, there is no risk in that and their retina details are kept safe because they don't have to give it if they are only for the captcha jobs. But as for the WLD foundation, they're trying to make a huge database with all of these details piled up on it and will merge with a global record that they can use for anything that they want to do, as they say for some services but we can never know what's next to it.

And in my searches, I only found that only the hardware part of their scanner devices are open sourced. The software is closed source and we do not know how they're processing retina scans.

They're keeping it to themselves just like a large database that will cater the entire world's population of having the massive data of retinas for every country that they have been. That's why they've paid for some WLD to the people that have allowed them to scan their retina, it is the payment but at what cost when these people realize that it's too late for them that they've made a decision, regret will come eventually.

[Hispo]

...

These are my thoughts or questions. I am really curious to here about your thoughts on this.

My opinion has always been the same on these kinds of projects which gather biometrical information in exchange for a small money. There is something really fishy going on with World coin, something we are not completely aware of.
At the very least, we could be talking about a project of biometric information gathering for the sake of selling all that information to hackers or cracked on the hidden web. In the worst case scenario, this is some cover project being funded by some authoritarian government so they can have some way to identify all the people they can from all the countries of the planet.
For example, this project could have been started by the Chinese government or the Iranian government or who knows...

I would never dare to get any closer to those orbs, to be honest. It is quite creepy how there are so many people willing to sell their identity for a few dollars.

[Abiky]

I was just researching this project, I found this is not new (of course I heard about it here) and in first glance, it seemed like some dystopian concept straight from an episode of black mirror, and in depth it seems like a cool concept of world citizenship.

However, I couldn't understand the project completely. There are weird devices which are scanning people's eyes to get a map of Iris (since it is also like the fingerprint and unique to people) and the scanner is being rewarded? So what will happen to the scanned person? Won't they be rewarded? It may seem hard to handle but there might be a solution to that.

Also there are publicly available Iris datasets (from medical centers or government offices which used Iris scan as a form of biometric authentication) and what happens if World Coin, specially being backed by Sam Altman (who has a history of using copyrighted material for OpenAI's model training) uses those and those people don't benefit from that?

These are my thoughts or questions. I am really curious to here about your thoughts on this.

Getting rewarded for providing your biometric data? Count me out. That's a blatant violation of an individual's privacy rights. Totally not worth it, imo. Sam Altman's "Worldcoin" project will fail if governments do not approve of its data collection techniques. Already, some countries have "banned" WLD from mainstream use. Others will follow if Worldcoin doesn't satisfy the regulators.

If by any chance WLD becomes a success, it might become the "One World Currency" many were talking about. A great way to enable a "New World Order" at lightning-fast speed. I can't imagine Worldcoin getting hacked someday. The attacker would gain our utmost sensitive personal info. It would be a huge disaster! With how centralized WLD is, anything's possible.

[TastyChillySauce00]

World Coin’s idea is interesting, but scanning people’s eyes feels risky. Who owns the eye data? What if it gets used in bad ways?

Also, why do the people who scan get rewards, but not the people scanned? That doesn’t seem fair.

I think it needs more clear rules to protect people’s privacy.

The people who get their irises scanned got the reward, but privacy definitely a concern.

We all know even the best of the best tech company got their data breached, this could cause future implication.
This is why many people feels like it's not worth the reward, imagine scanning irises for few bucks.

[jaberwock]

I couldn't understand the project completely. There are weird devices which are scanning people's eyes to get a map of Iris (since it is also like the fingerprint and unique to people) and the scanner is being rewarded? So what will happen to the scanned person? Won't they be rewarded? It may seem hard to handle but there might be a solution to that.

Per what I learned online, basically World coin aims to scam as many human Iris possible and collect that data to differentiate between AI and Humans in the future. I know it sounds weird but maybe they believe in future AI and humans won't be differentiated so needs some tech.

So my friend went in the mall or somewhere where they have these big devices where they scam your eyes and send you a few coins to your wallet. You can only claim it once per person/iris. My friend got all his friends/family scanned and paid them directly . Not entirely sure and not a fan of what they are doing. Because the data can be leaked/misused in the future and not worth selling your identity for a few dollars. The price of the token isn't doing great either.

[KillerEyez]

You’re spot-on calling it a bit dystopian as it does feel like something out of Black Mirror with those Orb devices scanning irises. Let me try to break down your questions and share my take.

Worldcoin’s core idea is to create a “World ID” using iris scans to verify you’re a human (not a bot) and issue a unique digital passport on their blockchain. The scanned person is the one rewarded—typically with WLD tokens (worth ~$50–$160 depending on market rates) and the World ID. The “scanner” (Orb operator) isn’t the one getting the crypto; Worldcoin usually hires them to run the devices. The catch is, as you mentioned, the process raises red flags. Privacy advocates, like Edward Snowden, have slammed it, warning about potential misuse of biometric data, especially since iris scans are super sensitive and could be used for surveillance if mishandled. Worldcoin claims the scans are deleted after creating an “IrisHash” (a cryptographic code), but critics argue there’s no guarantee, and a black msuch as Edward Snowden, have slammed it, warning about the potential misuse of biometric data, especially since iris scans are highlyarket for iris scans has already popped up in places like China.

Your concern about publicly available iris datasets is valid. If Worldcoin (or Sam Altman’s team) used those without consent, it’d be a huge ethical violation, especially given Altman’s track record with OpenAI and data controversies. The project’s been banned in countries like Spain and Portugal for issues like insufficient consent and scanning minors, and regulators in Germany, France, and Hong Kong are investigating. There’s also the worry about targeting low-income communities in places like Kenya and Indonesia with cash incentives, which feels exploitative since folks might not fully understand what they’re giving up.

The “world citizenship” angle is cool in theory, proving humanness in an AI-dominated future and maybe enabling universal basic income. But the execution’s messy. Lack of transparency, potential data leaks, and the fact that once your iris is scanned, you can’t “unscan” it, make it a gamble. I’d say it’s a fascinating but risky experiment. Why not check out meme coins like CatSlap ($SLAP), BTC BULL, or Fantasy Pepe? They’re all about community vibes and gamified rewards—like CatSlap’s Slap-to-Earn game where you rack up tokens by virtually slapping crypto characters. No creepy biometrics, just lighthearted crypto fun. What do you think about the privacy trade-off? Worth it for the crypto and ID, or too creepy?

[nelson4lov]

~Snipped.

Did you use AI? If you did, I'll implore you to stop as you'll get tagged pretty quickly. Anyway, it's a whole lot of crap because World ID is something the world doesn't need and their token—WLD, is a complete shitcoin as well as the other shitty memecoins you added at the end.

I remember when world chain/id when live and I know the people that benefitted most which is their team and investors. At the end of the day, they created something the world doesn't need and used it to farm their community.

[coin-investor]

If you know and understand privacy and decentralization, you will not support this concept. You will not accept a retina scan for a few coins for the price of one or two days' salary.
It made a headline in our country, where they invited people to scan their retina in exchange for $40 worth of their coin. It was a big hit in our country.
People are lining up because $40 is a significant amount in a third-world country, and they did not adequately explain the consequences. I call this exploitation and risky.

[Yanghudi]

retina scan to get wld token seems to be a bait for the benefit of the wld project they may not seem dangerous for now but later everyone will regret sharing their very important personal data which is unique