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