It's crypto, and it's Peter Thiel and Sam Altman, but definition it's a scam.

What do you mean when you say scam? Are you claiming this is fraudulent in some way?

As in, the promises they claim are different from the actual results, and they know this as they are saying them. It is a con, like everything crypto.

What is the thing they are claiming which is different from the actual results and which they know is different from the actual results?

That it actually freakin' works at doing the thing it's trying to do (providing a currency with a guarantee that each account is controlled by one person)

I don't believe they have ever promised that. One person = one account is not at all how the system is designed. It is definitely never mentioned or promised here: https://whitepaper.worldcoin.org/ and it is contrary to the system outlined in that document.

That whitepaper doesn't explicitly say "one person = one account", but it seems to be a really basic feature of the system:

- They clearly don't want accounts that don't belong to a person ("Keep the Bots Out" is an explicit goal).

- They also don't want one person with more than one account (World ID is intended to solve the problem of governance by ensuring that each person gets only one vote).

Everything in cryptography is a scam.

Cool.

Ssh is a scam. Got it.

Methinks you're committing the etymological fallacy. Crypto is not cryptography. Crypto is a specific subset of cryptography, quite far removed (in purpose, if not in technology) from normal cryptography.

Personally I think most coins are scams and the remaining are 50% scam

I mean the root comment pretty much already explained it. It is literally impossible for Worldcoin to actually perform its stated purpose, therefore it's a scam.

It is literally impossible for a simple deadbolt to keep intruders from entering your house. Are locks scams?

Separately, I strongly suspect that your idea of worldcoin's "stated purpose" is not something they have ever stated.

> It is literally impossible for a simple deadbolt to keep intruders from entering your house. Are locks scams?

If the lock manufacturer asserts or implies greater protection than the product offers (which is actually quite common), then yes, it's a scam.

> Separately, I strongly suspect that your idea of worldcoin's "stated purpose" is not something they have ever stated.

I encourage you to read their whitepaper, where they state that world id is indeed a proof of personhood. The allegation in this thread is that it fails at proving that someone is a unique person, and it cannot possibly due so because of the oracle problem. Therefore it is a scam.

https://whitepaper.worldcoin.org/

Oh, I think I see the confusion.

"proof of personhood" is something of a term of art which worldcoin did not invent. They are not literally claiming they can prove, in a mathematical sense, personhood. What would that even mean? See for example this, which seems to have originated the term in 2017: https://berkeley-defi.github.io/assets/material/Proof%20of%2...

"proof of personhood" was created in contrast to "proof of work" and "proof of stake". If you want to get technical "proof of work" is also not a mathematical proof, it is more of an argument of work, since it's possible to get lucky and find a low hash without doing all the work. The word "proof" is not doing what you think it is doing.

There are a couple other "proof of personhood" protocols and none of them mathematically prove personhood, because that is obviously impossible, some of them are listed at the beginning of this post: https://vitalik.eth.limo/general/2023/07/24/biometric.html

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 biometrics doesn't _completely_ solve this problem, there is still a pool of insiders who have an outsized amount of wld, but a very large number of people will be able to walk up to an orb to claim some wld and they will all receive roughly equal amounts. 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.

> 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 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?

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

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.

It seems you didn't read the article, it specifically talks about people are already buying accounts for $30 or less to be able to make accounts in areas where you're not allowed to register.

> "Scam" implies some kind of fraud or lie

Then Worldcoin is a scam.

https://www.technologyreview.com/2022/04/06/1048981/worldcoi...

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/richardnieva/worldcoin-...

what's fair about founders/investors holding 25% of all coins?

Does it? What prevents a factory owner from having all of his employees grab an orb, scan their irises, claim their coin, and then hand over their wallets to him as a condition of employment?

Assuming this thing actually works and won't accept irises grown in a vat or someone scanning a chimpanzee, it at least rate-limits you to creating new wallets with new coin at the rate at which you can find and coerce other humans, but it doesn't actually guarantee the 1:1 mapping of wallet:human or an equal initial distribution of coin.

All it's doing is shifting the balance of power from people who command many machines to people who command many other people. It's like reverting industrialism back to feudalism, a digital replay of the same mistake made by every communist revolution of the 20th century.

I said and I meant "more fair". We both agree this will not be a perfectly fair airdrop. Anything not perfect is feudalism?

> What prevents a factory owner from having all of his employees grab an orb, scan their irises, claim their coin, and then hand over their wallets to him as a condition of employment?

The airdrop is gated in multiple places. Everybody needs to visit an orb to claim worldcoin but the set of active orbs is managed by worldcoin and when one of them acts suspiciously the orb can be deactivated, among other counter-measures. A set of wallets all owned by distinct people will act differently than a set of wallets controlled by one person.

This is obviously not a perfect counter-measure, some fraud will absolutely occur. It is still a more fair initial distribution than any other currency I know of.

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.

You don't know what a ponzi scheme is. You're describing speculative markets, which have always existed, and must exist for any sort of economic stability to occur.

I assume, since Peter Thiel is involved, it somehow gets the biometrics to Planitir.

And from there to any intelligence agency willing to pay...