If you’re curious about the happenings of the Cybersecurity world, you may know of Edward Snowden. He’s the expert who gained popularity after putting the spotlight on the NSA’s terrible surveillance program. Now, it’s looked like he’s found problems in Worldcoin. It’s a cryptocurrency founded by the CEO of OpenAI, Sam Altman.
As a famed whistleblower, he criticized the project because it developed a complete database of users’ iris scans. He further argued that simply deleting the iris scans won’t make the problem go away. In a tweet, he explained that they’re waiving all responsibility by saying they deleted the scans. However, he explained that they still hold the hashes that are produced by the scans themselves. These can end up matching future scans. Bottom line: they shouldn’t be cataloging people’s eyeballs.
He further urged his users by warning them not to use their biometric information. This includes any purpose, and as he chose to put it: their body isn’t meant to act as a ticket punch.
Now, Worldcoin is gaining immense hype and the distribution works on a model that scans people’s eyeballs. It does use using a chromatic sphere that’s called the Orb. In the pilot study program, thirty of these orbs will be used in different countries across the world. In the pilot, it’s likely that people will have their eyes scanned for further research. As of yet, 130,000 people have participated in the trial.
But despite the fact that Worldcoin has a backing of venture capitalist giants like Andreessen Horowitz, privacy-conscious crypto fans are angry. Investors in the Bitcoin community explained how ridiculous it is that prominent investors are funneling money into this. They’re criticizing venture capitalists for focusing on this instead of improving Bitcoin’s ecosystem. After all, it is the flagship cryptocurrency of the crypto world.
In case you’re wondering, Worldcoin is based on a different blockchain besides Bitcoin. The cryptocurrency is set up on the Ethereum blockchain, which is the second-biggest blockchain in the world. Many people were speculating about the cryptocurrency’s reason for such a move, but the main reason was size. According to the co-founder of Worldcoin, Alex Blania, Bitcoin’s blockchain lacks the scalability to cater to the number of users they’re aiming for.
To put things into perspective, Worldcoin is talking billions of people. After Snowden made the comments via Twitter, Altman went on to defend the so-called social experiment. He said that the transactions will be decoupled cryptographically from the hash.
Needless to say, users are excited to learn more about the cryptocurrency and when it will launch. According to rumors, it will launch early next year as an ERC20 token.
