Summary:

Worldcoin is a token distribution project aimed at coordinating the interests of all participants and incentivizing new users to join the network for widespread adoption. The project symbolizes the principles of UBI economics, which is about providing an unconditional basic income. The global spread of COVID-19 in 2020 led many governments to stabilize their economies by distributing vouchers or cash to citizens, a practical application of UBI economics. However, such measures also highlighted significant issues like inflation and a decrease in the workforce’s willingness to work. UBI economics, as it stands, relies on centralized governments for wealth redistribution, which may stem from cutting government expenses or printing new money, without truly creating wealth. Hence, a genuine UBI economy might only be feasible with the advanced development of artificial intelligence. Sam Altman, co-founder of Worldcoin, suggests that both AI and Worldcoin represent his vision for the future world. The major challenge for Worldcoin is ensuring fair token distribution and establishing the token’s value. The project claims its iris scanning and ZKML technologies can prevent Sybil attacks, but concerns about privacy breaches and data regulation remain. Past ambitious projects like Facebook’s Libra and Pi Network have faced significant regulatory and credibility challenges, and while Bitcoin appears successful, its speculative nature still overshadows its utility value. Therefore, the success rate for such projects is notably low. Worldcoin’s advantages include a strong team background and a grand vision with significant potential. However, its drawbacks include potential privacy issues, challenges in preventing Sybil attacks, regulatory risks, and significant development obstacles. The low success rate of similar projects and the lack of substantial backing for its token may adversely affect individual investors. As such, a cautiously optimistic stance towards the project is advised. Note: The “Watch”/“Do Not Watch” recommendation from First-Class Cabin is based on a comprehensive analysis of the project’s fundamentals according to their assessment framework, not on future price predictions. Many factors can influence token prices, and fundamentals are not the sole factor. Therefore, a “Do Not Watch” designation does not necessarily predict a price drop. Additionally, as blockchain projects evolve, those labeled “Do Not Watch” may shift to “Watch” if significant positive changes occur, and vice versa, with significant negative changes prompting a warning to members and a possible status adjustment.

1.Basic Overview

1.1 Project Introduction

Worldcoin is a token distribution project that uses technologies such as blockchain, biology, and statistics to distribute tokens for free.

1.2 Basic Information

2. Project Details

2.1 Team

• Alex Blania: Served as a researcher at Caltech from 2019 to 2020; has been serving as the CEO and co-founder of Worldcoin’s operating company, Tools for Humanity, since 2020.

• Matthieu Jobbé-Duval: Worked as the head of oil options trading at Barclays Investment Bank from 2009 to 2017; led a digital assets project at Barclays Investment Bank in 2018; served as the head of financial products at Coinlist from 2019 to 2021; worked as a group product manager at Coinbase in 2021; served as the head of financial products at Dapper Labs from 2021 to 2023; has been an advisor at Tribal since 2021; started as CEO and co-founder of Worldcoin in April 2023.

• Saturnin Pugnet: Studied Computer Science at Imperial College London from 2014 to 2018; worked as a software development engineer at Amazon in 2017 and returned to Amazon in the same role from 2018 to 2019 after working at TransferWise as a software development engineer from 2017 to 2018; joined Worldcoin as a founding member in 2020.

• Michal Oginski: Studied Civil Engineering at the University of Bath from 2014 to 2018; pursued a Master’s in Management at the University of Cambridge from 2018 to 2019; worked as a consulting assistant at The Boston Consulting Group in 2018 and as a consulting director at 180Degrees Consulting SRCC from 2018 to 2019; served as a consulting assistant at Bain & Company from 2019 to 2021; worked at Daftcode as VP from 2021 to 2022; has been serving as the business operations manager at Worldcoin since September 2022.

• Samuel Barnes: Worked as a business manager at Likeable, a 10Pearls Company, in 2015; served as a brand strategy consultant at Whiteboard Pictures from 2016 to 2017; founded Sun Rose Strategy from 2015 to 2017; worked as the social media director at New York Open Center in 2017; served as a contributing writer at Well from 2017 to 2018; worked as a liaison officer at Singularity University from 2018 to 2019; served as a product manager at RegeNFT from 2021 to 2022; has been working as the community manager at Forta Foundation from 2021 to 2023 and at Worldcoin since 2023.

• A notable figure in the Worldcoin team is Sam Altman, a co-founder of OpenAI. However, the day-to-day operations of Worldcoin are led by CEO Alex Blania, with Sam Altman focusing primarily on OpenAI. Investors should not be overly swayed by the founder’s halo effect due to the popularity of ChatGPT.

2.2 Funding

Worldcoin has raised a total of $125 million to date, with $25 million raised in Series A funding and $100 million raised in the initial token offering round.

2.3 Code

Figure 2-1 Worldcoin Code Overview

According to the Worldcoin GitHub page, the project primarily utilizes programming languages such as C++, C, Python, M4, Makefile, and Shell. The project has a total of 694 volunteers.

2.4 Product

Worldcoin is an open-source protocol designed to facilitate global economic system access for everyone. Worldcoin coordinates the interests of all participants and aims for widespread adoption by distributing a majority of tokens to new users as incentives for joining the network. Currently, Worldcoin is operated by the Worldcoin Foundation and Tools for Humanity, with the former being a non-profit organization focused on supporting and developing the Worldcoin community until it becomes sufficiently decentralized. This goal is achieved by fostering a developer community, providing funding, and establishing participation protocols for community governance. Tools for Humanity, a technology company, aims to accelerate the transition to a fairer economic system. It led the initial development of the Worldcoin protocol and, besides operating the World App, has built other tools to support the Worldcoin protocol.

Worldcoin consists of three main components:

1) World ID: A privacy-protecting digital identity aimed at solving many significant, identity-based challenges, including proving an individual’s uniqueness.

2) World Token: Tokens distributed for free globally for utility and governance purposes.

3) World App: A completely self-hosted application that enables global payments, purchases, and transfers using Worldcoin Tokens, digital assets, stablecoins, and traditional currencies. The World ID is the most crucial component of Worldcoin, facilitating user identity verification. The team believes that the rapid development of artificial intelligence necessitates a system to distinguish between human and AI-generated content online;

Proof of personhood addresses two key considerations posed by the AI era:

1) Preventing Sybil attacks;

2) Minimizing the spread of misinformation generated by AI. World ID is an open and permissionless identity protocol, acting as a global digital passport that allows users to anonymously prove their uniqueness and humanity, and to selectively disclose credentials issued by others. Proof of personhood is a mechanism for establishing individual humanity and uniqueness, serving as the foundational building block for digital identities. It primarily addresses two issues: essentially eliminating large-scale Sybil attacks through identity verification and allowing filtering of content or accounts confirmed or not confirmed as human, which helps tackle the spread of false information generated by AI. Overall, World ID, World Token, and World App are akin to what we commonly understand as DID, tokens, and wallets, but Worldcoin achieves this not through conventional blockchain methods but by applying biometric and statistical techniques, with blockchain technology being just a part of the project. World ID offers a World ID SDK for developers, a digital passport enabling users to prove their unique and real identity while remaining anonymous, achieved through Zero-Knowledge Proofs (ZKP) and other privacy-preserving cryptographic mechanisms. Integration and use of World ID require registering on the developer portal, creating, and configuring the first application. World ID plans usage in voting, social media, and funds distribution. Users’ World IDs exist on their devices and only there, with identity wallets installed on devices generating a unique and random private key stored on the device, possibly including recovery mechanisms. Based on users’ private keys, a document is generated and published on the blockchain, considered an identity commitment. Each verification performed by users’ wallets generates a ZKP, with verifications not being difficult to link across applications or actions, aimed at protecting user privacy. The principle of identity proof allows an individual to digitally prove they are a unique real person. Building a global, scalable, and inclusive proof of personhood system is the core of World ID. Proof of personhood only needs to prove someone is a person, not which person. To serve other applications, World ID is now available as an OpenID Connect provider, with the following diagram outlining the general authentication process for integrating applications:

Figure 2-3 The Login Process of World ID

Worldcoin operates in three steps:

1) Download the World App: Downloading the World App allows users to set up a Worldcoin account and access a digital wallet connected to Worldcoin, Bitcoin, Ethereum, and other digital and traditional currencies (including stablecoins). The World App is operated by Tools for Humanity, a contributor to the Worldcoin system.

2) Register World ID: It is not necessary to register a World ID to use the World App. However, in order to receive a free share of Worldcoin tokens and other digital currencies, users must visit a Worldcoin operator and verify themselves with the Orb.

3) Receive Free Shares of Worldcoin and Other Digital Currencies: Every World App user receives an Ethereum wallet deployed on the blockchain through a smart contract. The World App uses account abstraction to enhance the overall security of the wallet. At its core, Worldcoin utilizes an account abstraction stack developed by the multi-signature wallet Safe. World App supports peer-to-peer payments using ENS usernames for more user-friendly ERC-20 transfers, and token swaps can be facilitated through Uniswap. Below are some key elements of the project:

• Zero-Knowledge Machine Learning: Zero-knowledge proofs are a common concept in the blockchain industry, a cryptographic protocol that allows a prover to convince a verifier that a given statement is true, without revealing any information beyond the truth of the statement itself. The two main “primitives” brought by ZK are the ability to create computational integrity proofs for a given computation, where verifying the proof is easier than performing the computation itself. The computational effort required to generate zero-knowledge proofs is many times that of the original computation, making some calculations infeasible due to the impractical time required to compute the zero-knowledge proofs. ZK technology can be used for identity verification and data provenance. Worldcoin needs to build World ID, a privacy-preserving personality proof protocol that allows anyone with a World ID to make cryptographic proofs that they are a unique individual without revealing their identity.

• Machine Learning is a subfield of artificial intelligence that involves the development and application of algorithms that enable computers to learn and adapt from data autonomously, optimizing their performance through an iterative process. Large language models, such as GPT-4 and Bard, are state-of-the-art natural language processing systems that generate human-like text using vast amounts of training data. From text-to-image models like DALL-E 2, Midjourney, and Stable Diffusion, they transform textual descriptions into visual representations with remarkable fidelity. The potential use of ZKML in the context of Worldcoin includes iris code upgradability, where World ID users will be able to keep their signed biometrics in the encrypted storage of their mobile device, download an ML model for generating iris codes, and create zero-knowledge proofs locally, proving their iris codes were indeed generated from the signed image using the correct model. This iris code can be inserted into the collection of registered Worldcoin users without permission, and the smart contract will be able to verify the zero-knowledge proof created by the iris code.

• Operator: Users can apply to become operators, and the process to become an operator consists of four parts:

1) Fill out a form to apply; 2) Interview; 3) Receive an Orb; 4) Start promotion. Operators can earn profits from each user who successfully registers using the Orb. Becoming an operator requires building one’s own promotional team and choosing locations with high foot traffic for promotion.

Figure 2-2 Operator Application Form

Orb is Worldcoin’s iris scanning technology used for identity verification. Orb is a small device capable of verifying an individual’s identity by scanning their iris. This technology aims to enhance the security and reliability of identity verification and to distribute cryptocurrency fairly through a universal basic income based on cryptocurrency. Since its introduction, the device has been controversial, with many concerned about the safety and privacy issues related to iris scanning technology. In response, the Worldcoin team has stated that commercial iris imaging devices do not meet the technical or security requirements needed by Worldcoin. The team spent years developing a custom device to achieve universal access to the global economy in the most inclusive and privacy-preserving manner possible. Orb is part of the World protocol, verifying whether a person is real and unique. It ensures the user is real by using highly specialized sensors, then captures, processes, and quickly deletes a series of iris images by default to create an iris code. Messages containing the iris code are sent from the Orb and compared with all other iris codes previously scanned on the Orb. Verified users will receive an identity proof in a compatible digital wallet. Worldcoin promises to protect user privacy, claiming that Orb can prevent deceit, tampering, or hacking. Each Orb is equipped with a private key stored in secure hardware for verifying the Orb and signing important messages. Anti-fraud algorithms based on multispectral sensors run locally on the device to maximize privacy protection. By default, Orb immediately deletes the iris images after creating the iris code. Furthermore, a team supporting the Worldcoin project is continuously testing the device, and several teams work daily to further enhance Orb’s security. The team initially did not want to develop hardware due to the significant resources required. However, they believe iris scanning is the most effective solution for resolving the issue of sybil attacks, given its strong anti-fraud properties and rich data. The Orb mainly consists of three parts:

1) Orb disassembly,

2) Upon removing the shell, the motherboard, optical system, and cooling system are revealed,

3) Mechanical design.

The Orb can be divided into four core parts:

1) Front-end: Optical system;

2) Middleware: The motherboard divides the device into two hemispheres;

3) Back-end: Main computing unit and active cooling system;

4) Bottom: Replaceable battery.

Figure 2-3 Orb Disassembly Diagram

How does Orb ensure user privacy?

The team guarantees that no data will be sold. The most crucial issue Worldcoin needs to address in distributing tokens is ensuring a person can only claim tokens once. For this purpose, the team has adopted iris biometrics, a unique biological datum of an individual. To maintain this privacy, images collected by Orb are immediately deleted unless the user specifically requests otherwise. By default, the only personal data that can leave the Orb is digitally represented information containing the most critical features of the image, to verify uniqueness, namely the World ID. World ID is designed to be completely disconnected from an individual’s biometric data. It uses zero-knowledge proofs to allow users to share specific information, such as proof of uniqueness, without disclosing any other information. World ID currently utilizes an open-source protocol called Semaphore to ensure anonymity in verification and that it cannot be traced back to an individual’s identity. Semaphore is a zero-knowledge protocol that allows users to signal (e.g., vote or endorse) as a provable member of a group without revealing their identity. Additionally, it provides a simple mechanism to prevent double-spending.

According to BlockBeats, some crypto users in certain regions were unable to register for a share at the launch of Worldcoin tokens, but a new method appeared: “scalpers” collected local villagers’ iris data in Southeast Asia and sold it to individual crypto users for $30 or less, helping them complete app registration. A Worldcoin spokesperson acknowledged this phenomenon but emphasized that the issue was limited to “a few hundred instances.” The spokesperson stated, “Through continuous threat and awareness monitoring measures, the Worldcoin team has identified suspicious and potential fraudulent activities that prompted individuals to register a verified World ID, then send it to a third party’s World App instead of their own.”

Meanwhile, Worldcoin’s handling of privacy also faces regulatory pressure. Worldcoin has a registered subsidiary in Germany, and under the principles of the GDPR regulation, any data operation within the EU or involving EU residents is subject to EU regulation. There is a factual conflict between Worldcoin’s global operation and EU regulations, such as the team’s claim that 1% of Portugal’s population has become its users, while how to handle global data has not been fully clarified. According to GDPR, “failure to adequately protect data could result in fines of up to 4% of global revenue or €20 million.” Additionally, whether Worldcoin can achieve the fair distribution it claims is a question. Limited by regulatory policies of various countries, residents of countries like China and the USA can register their App but cannot get verified through World ID. According to official data, most of Worldcoin’s registered locations are in poor countries, such as Africa and Latin America. Currently, the number of countries and regions participating in its test is 24, with 14 being developing countries and 8 in Africa. The specific distribution is as follows: Africa: Benin, Ghana, Nigeria, South Africa, Sudan, Zimbabwe, Kenya, and Uganda; Latin America: Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico; Europe: France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, the UK, Norway; Asia: India, Indonesia, Israel, Turkey. Whether its token can be promoted worldwide is doubtful, and Worldcoin’s self-research level is low, mostly adopting cooperation with well-known projects. In terms of infrastructure, Worldcoin cooperates with Optimism; for accounts, it chooses to cooperate with Safe; for transfers and transactions, it uses ENS and Uniswap. A good project does not need to reinvent the wheel, but overall, Worldcoin is not a very innovative project.

Summary: Worldcoin is an open-source protocol aimed at promoting the use of its tokens worldwide. The project’s biggest highlight is that its team co-founder is Sam Altman, founder of Open AI, which has made the project popular among investors due to this relationship. Worldcoin hopes to authenticate users for realness and uniqueness through iris scanning, but this method seems ineffective in practice and cannot avoid being exploited. Moreover, this method of collecting iris data raises concerns about privacy breaches and even government regulation. Disassembling Worldcoin, it has no significant difference from most digital currency projects’ DID, wallets, and tokens. The important difference lies in the project’s completion method, which is not limited to blockchain, nor is its influence limited to blockchain. However, the project’s self-research level is average, and its project components mostly adopt cooperation with major projects.

3. Development

3.1 Historical Milestones (Table 3-1 Major Events of Worldcoin)

3.2 Current Status

Figure 3-1 Worldcoin Account Creation Data

Currently, Worldcoin has registered a total of 1,375,299 accounts on the Polygon network, with 28,963 new accounts added last week. From the stacked graph perspective, the current rate of new additions has slowed down compared to the past. The Worldcoin App once issued commemorative NFTs, which are now tradable on OpenSea with a floor price of 0.008 ETH.

Figure 3-2 Worldcoin NFT Minting Data

The World App has minted a total of 67,451 NFTs, with 59,135 holders. The address with the highest number of NFTs holds a total of 414, and the top ten addresses hold at least 189 NFTs each. The total volume of NFT transactions is 242.39 ETH (displayed as 246 ETH on OpenSea).

3.3 Future

The project has not released a roadmap yet.

Figure 3-3 Worldcoin Discord’s Response Regarding the Roadmap

4.Economic Model

Token Name: $WLD, Total Supply: 10 billion. Table 4-1 Worldcoin Token Distribution

5. Competition

5.1 Industry Overview

The Worldcoin project is an embodiment of UBI (Universal Basic Income) economics, which is a discipline focused on the study of the concept, principles, effects, and implementation methods of unconditional basic income. Unconditional basic income refers to the regular disbursement of a certain amount of cash by the government or other organizations to all members without any conditions, qualifications, or work requirements, aimed at ensuring a basic standard of living and dignity for people. UBI economics deals with various issues such as the theoretical basis of UBI, sources of funding, distributional impacts, incentive effects, social welfare, economic growth, social stability, and more. It also explores the feasibility and adaptability of implementing UBI in different countries and regions, as well as its relationship and coordination with other social policies. UBI economics is reminiscent of historical utopian socialism. In the context of continuously improving productivity and the development of artificial intelligence, we cannot say that this idea has no realistic theoretical basis. However, UBI could also lead to problems such as inflation, debt crises, and may undermine people’s work motivation and sense of social responsibility, leading to resource wastage and efficiency losses. Additionally, UBI might face challenges in implementation and sustainability, requiring consideration of funding sources, distribution standards, and regulatory mechanisms. Overall, UBI projects are ahead of the current state of societal development, and such projects are essentially redistributions of wealth without truly creating wealth. Projects like Worldcoin believe that the existing economic model has many problems and are committed to solving these problems to improve human life. Whether these initiatives can help improve the existing economic model or make human lives better are macro-level questions that are difficult to quantify, making it challenging to determine if these methods genuinely address some macro-level issues. Thus, we can only argue logically and theoretically about the potential success of these projects.

5.2 Competitive Analysis

Libra: In 2019, the American internet giant Facebook launched Libra, a project aimed at creating a simple global currency and financial infrastructure. It was managed by an independent non-profit organization called the Libra Association, composed of Facebook and several other companies and institutions. Libra was a stablecoin, pegged to a basket of fiat currencies, enabling fast, low-cost cross-border payments on platforms that support Libra. The project released its white paper in June 2019, attracting unprecedented attention in the blockchain industry while also raising concerns among global regulators about potential threats to financial stability and monetary sovereignty. Some founding members withdrew from the project due to political pressure. To address regulatory challenges, Libra released a revised white paper in April 2020, making significant adjustments including: 1) abandoning the single stablecoin design in favor of issuing multiple stablecoins pegged to individual fiat currencies (e.g., LibraUSD, LibraEUR) and a composite stablecoin (Libra Coin); 2) enhancing the security and transparency of reserve funds, promising to store them with reputable central banks or international institutions and subjecting them to audit and supervision; 3) increasing measures against financial crimes and consumer protection, requiring all network participants to comply with local laws and regulations, and using a compliance network interface (VAN) to verify user identities and risk levels; 4) abandoning the goal of eventually becoming an unpermissioned network, maintaining a permissioned network status, with association members voting on whether to transition to an unpermissioned network in the future. However, the Libra project inevitably failed, mainly due to the following reasons: 1) Regulatory resistance: Since its white paper release in June 2019, Libra faced strong opposition and scrutiny from governments and regulatory bodies worldwide, concerned about threats to financial stability, monetary sovereignty, consumer protection, data privacy, anti-money laundering, and counter-terrorism financing. The US Congress even requested Facebook to pause the Libra project and held multiple hearings to question Libra’s representative, David Marcus. Libra encountered strict regulatory barriers in the US and Europe, unable to obtain necessary approvals and permissions; 2) Partner withdrawal: Initially led by Facebook, the Libra Association consisted of 28 well-known companies and institutions to manage and operate the Libra network, including payment giants like Visa, Mastercard, PayPal, e-commerce platforms eBay, Mercado Pago, blockchain companies Coinbase, Xapo, and investment firms Andreessen Horowitz, Union Square Ventures. However, facing government pressure and scrutiny, some key partners, including PayPal, Visa, Mastercard, eBay, and Stripe, withdrew from the Libra Association, weakening the project’s influence and credibility; 3) Business sale: After several adjustments, the project, renamed Diem, still did not receive US government approval and faced competition from other cryptocurrency projects. In January 2022, the Diem Association announced the sale of its intellectual property and other assets related to the Diem payment network operation to Silvergate Bank, gradually dissolving its subsidiaries. This marked the official end of Facebook’s currency dream. Bitcoin: Bitcoin is a cryptocurrency and a decentralized digital currency not controlled by any government agency or financial institution. Created in 2009 by an individual or group using the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto, Bitcoin allows users to conduct transactions directly without intermediaries like banks. Bitcoin transactions are recorded and verified using blockchain technology, a distributed database storing all Bitcoin transaction records. Each block contains multiple transactions, linked to the previous block through complex cryptographic algorithms, forming an immutable transaction history. According to Bitcoin’s on-chain data, there are over one billion wallet addresses, with approximately 250,000 transactions per day and about 1,000,000 active addresses daily. Assuming every five unique addresses correspond to one unique user and considering a 30% overlap with Ethereum users, Bitcoin’s total user base is approximately 3.889 million. Meanwhile, Visa, a digital payment company, has over 426 million active users and merchant accounts, covering more than 200 markets and supporting 25 currencies. Compared to traditional payment methods, Bitcoin still has significant differences.

Figure 5-1 Bitcoin Hashrate Network

Pi Coin is the native currency of the Pi Network, which can be mined through the Pi application. Pi Coin utilizes a consensus mechanism called the Stellar Consensus Protocol, initially developed for the Stellar blockchain. The mission of the Pi Network is to build a cryptocurrency and smart contracts platform operated securely by ordinary people. It offers a developer platform called the Pi Apps Platform, allowing developers to build applications on the Pi Network. This platform provides an interface called the Pi Browser, where developers can quickly develop, test, and deploy decentralized Pi applications. Users can access Pi applications by downloading the Pi Browser and logging in through the Pi mining application. Mining Pi Coin is free. Pi Coin has been criticized for being a pyramid scheme because joining requires an invitation, but the team denies that the project is a pyramid scheme. They believe their goal is to establish a decentralized cryptocurrency network, providing ordinary people with digital currency that is easier to obtain and use.

Figure 5-2: Pi Coin Blockchain Explorer

Practitioners in the cryptocurrency industry generally believe that the existing monetary system has several issues, such as:

1) Centralization: The current monetary system is centralized, controlled by governments and financial institutions. This means that individuals have limited control over their currency and may be affected by political and economic instability;

2) Inflation: The current monetary system is prone to inflation. When governments increase the money supply, the purchasing power of the currency decreases, leading to price increases;

3) Unequal Opportunities: The current monetary system may be unfair. Due to the control of credit by financial institutions, some people may be unable to obtain loans, thus missing out on economic opportunities;

4) High Costs: In the existing monetary system, the fees for cross-border remittances and transfers can be high. This hinders the flow of global trade and investment.

Cryptocurrencies attempt to address these issues by offering a decentralized, secure, transparent, and low-cost alternative. Overall, projects that attempt to change the current economic model have a very low success rate, and even Bitcoin is largely more speculative in value than practical. The existing macroeconomic operation model indeed has some problems, but these are very grand propositions that require the efforts of several generations to solve. The proponents of these UBI (Universal Basic Income) projects believe they are improving the economic system affecting billions of people, but a more realistic reason might be their hope to share in the enormous financial industry. From the perspective of these UBI projects, the values of Bitcoin, Pi Coin, and Worldcoin have no actual backing, and Libra had considered using low-risk asset reserves, including bank deposits in various currencies and U.S. Treasury bonds. The Libra model and most stablecoin models are similar, with the difference being that Libra had the backing of Silicon Valley giants and believed its target audience was broader than just the crypto industry users.

The innovation in the blockchain industry always comes with the shadow of money laundering and terrorism financing. For most regulatory bodies, the innovation in the blockchain industry is less about providing financial means to the majority and more about offering methods for criminals, with tornado.cash being a prime example. The conservative attitude of regulatory bodies is not entirely negative; for most ordinary users, the financial innovations in the blockchain industry are not user-friendly, and it is easy for people to suffer losses. Moreover, Worldcoin, as a project without actual value support, poses a significant question: who will pay for the token’s value after its issuance? It’s likely that widely distributed tokens could cause investment losses for ordinary users.

Given the rapid development of artificial intelligence, the future economic development may significantly reduce the demand for labor, potentially leading to the development of mature UBI projects. Therefore, these projects are worth attention.

6. Risks

1) Legal and Regulatory Risks: UBI projects may cause inflation, money laundering, and impact currency stability, making them highly susceptible to regulation.

2) Development and Promotion Risks: The Worldcoin project requires widespread adoption by users, but promoting a digital currency project without tangible support globally is very challenging.

3) Privacy Breach Risks: Registering a World ID requires providing iris data, which, if leaked, can harm users’ privacy. This is inconsistent with the blockchain industry’s values of de-trust and anonymity.

Disclaimer：

1. This article is reprinted from [头等仓区块链研究院]. All copyrights belong to the original author [Jacob Ko]. If there are objections to this reprint, please contact the Gate Learn team, and they will handle it promptly.
2. Liability Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not constitute any investment advice.
3. Translations of the article into other languages are done by the Gate Learn team. Unless mentioned, copying, distributing, or plagiarizing the translated articles is prohibited.