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Worldcoin isn’t as bad as it sounds: It’s worse

blockworks.co

151–160 of 370 posts

Re: Worldcoin isn’t as bad as it sounds: It’s worse

#151

I think you should instead just read what Worldcoin wrote. It's quite short, and I think easy to consider false. https://worldcoin.org/cofounder-letter There are a few words about economic opportunity but little explanation, so you can discount that part. They don't seem to believe it beyond UBI distribution, which has the same problems as any distribution today[1] Their main sell: > scale a reliable solution for dis…

You’re misunderstanding how worldcoin works just like basically everyone who tries to criticize it. There’s no way to tie World IDs together between platforms. A unique ID is generated per platform from your wallet.

Re: Worldcoin isn’t as bad as it sounds: It’s worse

#152

[flagged]

Yeah, the article and this whole comments thread is very intellectually dishonest. Disclosure: I’m like, 70% optimistic about the project. I don’t believe that the team are lying. Anyway, as with many things, time will tell. I wouldn’t get worked up over it. If it fails it’s pretty inconsequential.

> I don’t believe that the team are lying.

That would be really crazy if the team behind a crypto startup just lied about their business and intentions - certainly has never happened before!

Re: Worldcoin isn’t as bad as it sounds: It’s worse

#153

I don't get all the comments, from the worldcoin website: > Your biometric data is first processed locally on the Orb and then permanently deleted. The only data that remains is your IrisCode. This IrisCode is a set of numbers generated by the Orb and is not linked to your wallet or any of your personal information. As a result, it really tells us — and everyone else — nothing about you. All it does is stop you from…

You can't beat disgust with better tech.

Re: Worldcoin isn’t as bad as it sounds: It’s worse

#156

This is the Eye of Sauron. I'm very much into the crypto world and I'm so tired of all of these dumb scams. Even worse that it is backed by yet another scammer named 'Sam'. I really wish we could focus on things that actually provided value to people. What a waste of time/money/effort. I hope this one dies a quick death. So far, it looks like it will, which is great.

This is a really tired take. Please provide some substance as to why you think this is a bad project instead of just shitting in it without justification

Re: Worldcoin isn’t as bad as it sounds: It’s worse

#157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why does that make it a scam? "Scam" implies some kind of fraud or lie, I don't believe worldcoin has ever claimed biometrics were required for later usage. The value of the biometric is in ensuring a ~ more fair ~ airdrop. With bitcoin the people who discovered it first and who were able to run miners received an outsized reward, and consequently the distribution of bitcoin is extremely unequal. The usage of biometr…

> The initial distribution of wld will be much more fair than the initial distribution of any other token or currency I know of. That is the value of the biometric. And how is this not a lie when it's so easy to game? It's only shifting the distribution from people who were running a computer early to people who buy biometrics early, steal biometrics or find ways to fake biometrics. And even worse, if you were once r…

I disagree that it's so easy to game but maybe you know more than me?

I'm not sure what you mean by buying biometrics early, stealing them seems very uneconomical, and faking them is an engineering challenge which seems quite difficult.

> And even worse, if you were once robbed of your biometrics in that system, you have lost it forever as I understand it? Is there even any way to get back what was robbed from you?

The biometric is only used for the airdrop. It is possible to create a wallet and send and receive transactions without ever visiting an orb. The only thing the biometric does is send an initial amount of WLD to your wallet and ensure that you can only receive that initial amount once.

If someone steals your wallet there is no getting it back, it is not linked to your identity it is just a private key. I'm not really sure what it means in this context to steal your biometrics?

> And just out of curiosity, does this system handle collisions of biometrics? Or is it just assuming and hopes for none to happen?

This is territory I don't know very well. I believe irises were chosen specifically because they were not invasive and they contain enough entropy that the chance of collisions is quite small. I don't know if it has enough entropy that they can be sure there are no collisions or if it has enough entropy that the expected number of collisions was tolerably low.

Re: Worldcoin isn’t as bad as it sounds: It’s worse

#158
post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's funny how, in the end, the ultimate and perhaps only proof of personhood is being a person, engaged in the world. Sort of how the ultimate decentralized currency is encompassed in the global market of rising and falling economic powers. The oracle problem is a problem because there are no oracles. There is only the test of time. Or something along that line.

> the ultimate and perhaps only proof of personhood is being a person, engaged in the world I buy this. Daniel Suarez had a very similar idea, although he referred to it as the bot problem[0]. I believe this approach of identities withstanding "the test of time" solves the oracle problem but at the cost of a delayed solution. Initially you have lots and lots of bots and Sybil attacks are common. Then after a while, i…

Keybase was sort of trying to do this with social proof, though it's reliance on a centralized provider (keybase itself) made it brittle.

I think you can get there with something like Urbit IDs that are easy to ban. If IDs are not infinite you can some protection against abuse - pairing that with some proof-of-humanity and you can get closer, but there are still issues of someone doing the proof and then selling their ID to a bot. At least if it's easy to ban you can try to make that not economical. Doubly true if the IDs have a non-zero (but low) cost.

Helps make you resistant to a sybil attack: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sybil_attack

The problem isn't trivial though - it's not obvious what will work best and it'll likely always be somewhat of an arms race, especially if you want to keep privacy.

Re: Worldcoin isn’t as bad as it sounds: It’s worse

#159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait, the biometric information are only used for the creation of the wallet, not the later usage? Then isn't this scam? What is the actual value of using biometric for this?

Why does that make it a scam? "Scam" implies some kind of fraud or lie, I don't believe worldcoin has ever claimed biometrics were required for later usage. The value of the biometric is in ensuring a ~ more fair ~ airdrop. With bitcoin the people who discovered it first and who were able to run miners received an outsized reward, and consequently the distribution of bitcoin is extremely unequal. The usage of biometr…

Describing it like this makes it sound very much like a ponzi scheme. When you buy into WLD, you're effectively giving money to current WLD holders, with the hope that more suckers will buy in and do the same for you.

Re: Worldcoin isn’t as bad as it sounds: It’s worse

#160
post #156

This is the Eye of Sauron. I'm very much into the crypto world and I'm so tired of all of these dumb scams. Even worse that it is backed by yet another scammer named 'Sam'. I really wish we could focus on things that actually provided value to people. What a waste of time/money/effort. I hope this one dies a quick death. So far, it looks like it will, which is great.

This is a really tired take. Please provide some substance as to why you think this is a bad project instead of just shitting in it without justification

Worldcoin was just released, it can't be tired already! The only thing tiring here are the repeat grifting VC scams.
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