For those who believe that decentralization matters, Worldcoin targets an important obstacle: the obstacle that prevents democratization of dapps. (Decentralized apps.) For example, say you want a cryptocurrency designed with universal basic income in mind. Or, say you want a censorship-resistant, human-populated social network, or a public review system allowing one review per person instead of one review per bot. In the world of dapps, only proof of humanity permits you to do these things because per-capita smart contracts are otherwise impossible. It's not too hard to imagine how these networks - and, thus, the cryptocurrencies underlying them - could have value.

Outside the web3/blockchain world, it probably isn't obvious why the problem Worldcoin aims to solve is important. Because, in traditional apps, it's a problem whose solution one can take for granted. (Often.)

Maybe proof of humanity won't be at all impactful. For that matter, maybe decentralization itself is doomed, whether due to ethical concerns, moral panic, or government hostility. Presumably, the creators of Worldcoin are skeptical that we should treat either of those outcomes as likely.

I don't doubt that Worldcoin creators want to solve decentralized identity and give out coins to participants. It's just hard for me to see a path to which it scales or becomes practical for an exchange of goods, unless many governments and businesses start using Worldcoin for identity services.

There also seems to be other blockchains to offer identity management, albeit no additional UBI aspect, so then how does Worldcoin beat out the other blockchains offering the same service? It's not clear to me but I agree that it's good that people are trying.

It really isn't all that interesting to just "use" a blockchain to offer identity management on top. What is interesting though, is to use identity management to offer a blockchain.

Let's think about it. The whole point of a blockchain is to establish decentralized consensus regarding a chain of transactions. Bitcoin and the like do so by wasting a ridiculous amount of energy proof-of-work-ing a hash pace that would thwart any attempted 51% attack. Others use proof of stake that effectively tends to put all control into the hands of an oligarchy of early adopters and/or old world capitalists.

But we could do so much better. Imagine if everyone was capable of use public key cryptography while keeping their own identity-linked private key properly private. No more Sybil attacks. No need for PoW or PoS shenanigans. You'd simply only need a certain number/threshold of transparently unique _real_ individuals to sign off on a block for consensus to arise naturally.

I've always believed properly implemented PKC could be key to a truer form of democracy than the world has seen so far. Then again, I'm not sure I have enough faith in humanity for this to actually ever happen.

What stops someone in a wealthy country from just hiring a bunch of destitute people in a developing country for pennies and borrowing their Worldcoin identities to do bot-stuff? That's kind of how influence networks work anyway, individuals are paid to be indistinguishably legitimate users. It's not like some random guy trying to feed his family is going to give a shit about emailing you his private key if you'll send him some cash in exchange. Odds are he'll never use a "dapp" so it doesn't matter if you trash his Worldcoin identity for your own purpose.

This isn't crazy, people already do this with cell phone numbers for sites that force phone verification.

I guess, like any other identity, it could be used for fraud. Either by it’s owner or by someone who gained access to it.

Block chains are a bad case for democratic operations in that you can prove how you voted, particularly through sharing your private key. I think it's essential that you can do that, or the block chain doesn't work?

This enables anti-democratic practices like paying for votes, or being retaliated against for voting against the local mob boss

I would just point out zero-knowledge proofs. Magically enough, no, that's not a necessary feature of blockchains.

Zcash allows an independent observer to verify that a transaction was authorized and completed. It does this without revealing (a) who the recipient was (b) who the sender was or (c) how much Zcash was sent.

Extending this idea to broader use cases: https://aztec.network/