No need to speculate, it's the second one and they even describe it on their web site:

    Orbs will be remotely monitored and compared to other Orbs. Such monitoring is based on non-biometric metadata from the Orb, including battery level, temperature, and network strength. Anomalies will be flagged and lead to Orbs being deactivated. This anomaly detection happens in the cloud and therefore comes with higher security guarantees than device-level spoof and tamper detection.

What you're mistaken about is that the "currency" is not the same as this biometric airdrop (initial distribution). The airdrop is not open at all. The currency itself, once distributed, is just a token on Ethereum (with optimistic rollups). It's essentially as open as any other Ethereum token.