Worldcoin, the digital ID passport and universal basic income project, is allegedly rising in popularity, with thousands of people said to be signing up and registering. According to Sam Altman, co-founder of the project, one person is currently verified by the iris scanning devices — the “Orb” — every 8 seconds. However, some data could call these claims into question.
Worldcoin Operations Allegedly Ramping Up, One Person Getting Verified Every 8 Seconds
Worldcoin, a project that aims to become a digital decentralized ID that will serve to deploy a Universal Basic Income (UBI) system with Sybil protections, is seeing more interest from potential users, according to statements from its team.
The project launched officially on July 24 after more than three years of development, and it is currently ramping up its presence in different parts of the world. Photos of the iris scanning devices, called “Orbs,” have been shown on Worldcoin’s social media accounts, confirming their presence in cities like Lisbon, Miami, and Los Angeles, even as the World App is not available in the U.S. due to lack of regulatory clarity.
Sam Altman, CEO of Openai and co-founder of Worldcoin, posted a video on social media showing users waiting in line to be signed up using an Orb to verify their identities. Altman stated there were “crazy lines around the world,” declaring that one person was getting verified every 8 seconds.
Altman’s Objectives
Due to the supposed high level of demand, Worldcoin is now allowing users to reserve their genesis airdrop of 25 WLD, the native token of the protocol, and be verified later to obtain it. However, reports indicate this demand might not be as high as Altman states. For example, a recent article published on SCMP declares only a few hundred participants registered in Hong Kong on Monday and Tuesday.
While Worldcoin announced it had reached 2 million signups on July 13, the data shows that only about 13% of these users have possession of the WLD tokens on the Optimism network. According to Etherscan, less than 270,000 participants are holding WLD, the protocol’s token. This is still far from the 2 billion people Altman mentioned recently on social media as his final goal.
According to blockchain research company Kaiko, due to the distribution of liquidity among market makers, the first weeks might be crucial for the project, given that the value of the airdrop is close to $50 is “and will likely stay in that range for the next three months.”
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