Guest: Alex Blania
Host: Sebastien Couture and Friederike Ernst
https://epicenter.tv/episodes/435
Background
-Vertical farming
-Caltech physics
Sam (Altman) was already working with Max on it Alex became friends with them, became a cofounder
Brought on friends from German uni, Caltech Lots of physicists as a result
He’s CEO, there’s 100 people, runs daily business
Sam is cofounder & chairman, involved in every big decision
Max is great zero to one guy
Started Worldcoin 2 years ago
How to accelerate societal transition into crypto & blockchain, should be net positive for society
Initially planned to launch a token, accessible to everyone How to solve sybil resistance so everyone gets a fair share?
Built hardware device, “the orb” to verify this It’s a platform for other projects, as well as for their own token (Worldcoin)
Onboarded 450K users already, now ready to scale
Initially thought about sybil resistance for months
Lots of existing solutions with problems – KYC, network topology Only truly scalable solution is biometrics (it’s unique to each person, only need to do it once)
You can use ZKP in crypto to make it privacy preserving while maintaining scale
Didn’t want to make a hardware device, it’s a brutal endeavor
The Orb “Proof of personhood” – how to prove you’re unique and alive, not a bot or attacker
First liveness check, checks you’re a real human Calculates unique ID from picture of eye – from eye muscle – only eye biometric data really works, fingerprint and face don’t
Iris hash stored in L2
User can then prove they’re among a set of people
But doesn’t reveal public or private key – only proves you belong to a group of people
DB of iris hashes is stored on an L2
Team is very extreme on privacy
Biometrics aren’t your identity, just your passport Orb users receive 2 key pairs – one is eg ETH wallet private & public key, second is biometric data keys (semaphore key?)
Only thing you can prove from the hash is that you belong to a group of users (eg, you use a specific app) – which is more secure than eg, your Google username
Expect to eventually open source hardware designs
SC: Concern that hardware becomes hacked or corrupted, open sourcing hardware would be helpful. Is there a nightmare scenario?
Real concern is malicious people who build own orbs and pretend it’s the official Orb
Need to be very transparent and educational about this
SC: Got a DNA kit for Xmas, but decided to send it back – it’s the unknown unknowns he can’t square
Worldcoin is truly privacy preserving by its design and usage of ZKPs
Token is L2 on Ethereum, optimistic rollup Will allow minting token on other blockchains like Solana or Near
Right now if you lose your semaphore key (the Orb specific key), then you lose your identity – still need to solve for this
They’re building own app to help with onboarding
New users sign up, receive Worldcoin tokens, with governance rights
Experimenting with incentive mechanisms 10B tokens, capped supply, 8B to users
Early users receive more tokens – a gradual unlock over time (eg, 2 years) – more like UBI Other projects will also airdrop to Worldcoin network – should start happening soon
They’re very excited about UBI, especially when AGI gets closer
If reach supply cap (eg, if literally everyone in world adopts it), let’s see what governance / community decides to do
Started as small team in SF apartment
Plan to make 50K of these orbs every year
Already onboarded 450K with just 30 devices – think about the eventual scale
Each device can onboard 800-2K people/week – the numbers are much better than they initially thought
Operational load is insane – how to educate, properly onboard
30 devices – spread widely, very experimental, across globe (Europe, Africa, Indonesia, etc) Want to find operators who would otherwise run companies
Strong Pareto distribution – the best ones onboard a lot more people
Eg, operator ran a crypto club in Kenya, onboards a lot of young people there
Worldcoin not tradable today – you receive IOUs today – wait until main net goes live
Young people find it cool and exciting
Becomes platform for other protocols and tokens
Orb operators receive stablecoin payments, not Worldcoin
How do you align operators?
Eg, operator could trick people, go to elderly home and scan everyone’s irises
Tough problem, still experimenting, seeing these problems already with just 30 orbs
Corporate structure US entity, German entity, Swiss foundation
Small team in SF, most of team in Europe – in small town in middle of Germany, did this during covid so they could work together Swiss foundation for token issuance
Figuring out how to properly setup DAO, with governance rights, etc
Raised $25M from top VCs @ $1B valuation – a16z, SBF, CoinFund, etc
Plan 10% to foundation, 10% to external investors (including above VCs)
// I’m not sure if he’s referring to token allocation or equity ownership in company
FE: How does this align with fair launch mission? If want to do global UBI coin but insiders own 20%
20% is less than other projects, those investors like cdixon are great partners to have, but early advisors / investors thought it was too low and wouldn’t work
Even now they think it’s a struggle since hardware + global scale requires a lot of capital
Incentives should all be aligned around the token, not the company itself
SC: seems like it should be a public good
“It will become a public good”
“I love our investors”
FE: What’s the meme for Worldcoin?
Bitcoin is 0.9 Gini coefficient, Worldcoin will be 0.4 (much better)
Everyone gets ownership in this thing, new playing field
FE: You’re creating value first and foremost for the investors…is it gonna rub people the wrong way? Will it get forked?
We can adapt and change – issue other tokens – etc – have talked to Balaji about this too
SC: Ukraine conflict will accelerate crypto regulation
In 20 years, how will WC make world better?
Solve Sybil resistance
Biggest onboarding to web3 See path to 1B users in <3 years – “was very surprising to us”
UBI deployment
Expect 10M+ users by end of 2022
Open SDK soon – under 3 months
Orbs will lead to different user distribution than other crypto networks – because orb operators spread geographically, and then onboard high penetration locally
This network will give other builders access to lots of new users
Will launch Discord and Telegram relatively soon
FE: wouldn’t personally use biometrics, prefers “web of trust” to scale in truly decentralized manner – “you don’t want to have a conductor for this”