101–110 of 318 posts
As I understand it, the distribution mechanism of Worldcoin is not part of the protocol. The protocol does not know anything about eyes. So the distribution seems completely centralized. A central authority distributes the coins however they wish. Today they might use a process involving eye scans. Or maybe not. There is no way to check. Tomorrow they might change their approach however they like. And we would have n…
Worldcoin issues tokens to people for scanning their retinas. Their magical orb device sends a biometric hash to their network. Here's my take on it: You can possibly replace their biometric device with a random hash generator. * If it works, it means the currency is not fairly distributed, but anyone sending valid hashes to their network is issued tokens, irrespective of whether the eyeballs described by those hashe…
Worldcoin issues tokens to people for scanning their retinas. Their magical orb device sends a biometric hash to their network. Here's my take on it: You can possibly replace their biometric device with a random hash generator. * If it works, it means the currency is not fairly distributed, but anyone sending valid hashes to their network is issued tokens, irrespective of whether the eyeballs described by those hashe…
While I don't care about Worldcoin (I think it will fail, because they are solving the problem that does not exist), this post is false in multiple ways. First, retina scanning output hash is deterministic - it is supposed to generate the same result for the same eyeball. So it can't be replaced with random number generation. Second, network does not interpret hashes, except for making sure that single hash is awarde…
Actually, the lowest state of the art false positive rates for biometric id is achieved by iris scans, so I have to wonder why they went with retinal scanning in this case.
Note that I'm not saying you can intentionally cause a false positive or false negative very easily. These are both highly reliable identification methods. But they're not deterministic, so if you're hashing the literal scanned signature, the hash output won't be deterministic, either. Presumably, what they're doing isn't hashing at all. Normally, for biometric id you just store the signature in a database and use a thresholding function to match against it when new scans comes in.
This is just so wrong in so many different ways, it actually fills me with despair to think that there are people somewhere who actually think this is in some ways a good idea. To the point of wondering if there is some way of organising more direct action to stop this kind of disaster from befalling the human race.
At some point one needs to assume it is no longer a matter of ignorance, but instead one of malice. Not sure if this is near that point. Perhaps this guy is simply a fluff bunny who has never seen any evil in this world.
Having met Altman, "fluffy bunny" is not a too far off assessment.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I wouldn't call the coin distribution fair if the creators can allocate arbitrary amounts to themselves, which the Worldcoin creators appear able to do. Then again, even PoW coins with no premine can be unfair if most of the long-term supply gets distributed in just the first few years, leaving only crumbs for late adopters.
>Then again, even PoW coins with no premine can be unfair [...] It's "fair" if you're referring to equal opportunity, not equal outcomes.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I wouldn't call the coin distribution fair if the creators can allocate arbitrary amounts to themselves, which the Worldcoin creators appear able to do. Then again, even PoW coins with no premine can be unfair if most of the long-term supply gets distributed in just the first few years, leaving only crumbs for late adopters.
>Then again, even PoW coins with no premine can be unfair [...] It's "fair" if you're referring to equal opportunity, not equal outcomes.
Imagine if half of all gold on earth was already mined in the first 4 years (and over 99% in the first 27 years) of gold mining millenia ago.
It includes a projection graph that has a scale in 500m user increments and 2 years. Then you have the real data: over 6 months they've signed up 120k users. Or to put it another way - their real data doesn't even appear on the scale that their projections are displayed. They've basically extrpolated from 0 to 1.5bn. Oh and the graph lists sign ups per orb as if manufacturing the orbs is the limiting factor for signing people up to your shitcoin.
It also claims they're going to give out thousands of these orbs. But these orbs are the trusted hardware devices for generating unique hashes from biometric data. So if 1 of these thousands of devices falls into the hands of a hacker who can crack the hashing algo they're done. Not only will they have no guarantee that the users are unique, and probably they've also leaked huge amounts of biometric data. They actually mention this on their how it works page - don't worry guys, they'll make it hard to spoof! Honestly. It'll be tamper proof!
I kind of understand how you could try and argue that these devices are ok if you're going to have a small number of them extremely securely protected, but the plan is literally to manufacture 4,000 of these per month and hand them out to random people. Honestly, it's like they've just never had a conversation with someone who thinks critically about anything.
This is just so wrong in so many different ways, it actually fills me with despair to think that there are people somewhere who actually think this is in some ways a good idea. To the point of wondering if there is some way of organising more direct action to stop this kind of disaster from befalling the human race.
This might be an onpopular opinion on here, but I think that software (and hardware) development needs to be regulated, similar to pharma or other regulated industries. The regulation can take into account several factors to make the barrier for smaller projects not too high.
FYI this project (and basically every cryptocurrency project) already falls under some kind of financial regulation in most jurisdictions.
Worldcoin issues tokens to people for scanning their retinas. Their magical orb device sends a biometric hash to their network. Here's my take on it: You can possibly replace their biometric device with a random hash generator. * If it works, it means the currency is not fairly distributed, but anyone sending valid hashes to their network is issued tokens, irrespective of whether the eyeballs described by those hashe…
It's a stupid idea. You can appreciate it's simplicity and how everything fits together like puzzle pieces, but it is ultimately a stupid idea because it lives in the real world and has predictable real world consequences.
Worldcoin issues tokens to people for scanning their retinas. Their magical orb device sends a biometric hash to their network. Here's my take on it: You can possibly replace their biometric device with a random hash generator. * If it works, it means the currency is not fairly distributed, but anyone sending valid hashes to their network is issued tokens, irrespective of whether the eyeballs described by those hashe…
TY for the explainer. To make sure I understand, it sounds like a Sybil attack can exploit a hash function because ultimately, what is being hashed does not matter and to verify what is being hashed requires centralization.