All you have to do is scan your eyeball with a big metal sphere.

No, really.

I don’t know if you’ve heard by now, maybe you have, or maybe you haven’t. But Sam Altman (CEO of OpenAI and former president of Y Combinator) and Alex Blania are nearing the launch of their new project, Worldcoin. Worldcoin is, in the words of Sam Altman, “A new, collectively owned global currency that will be distributed fairly to as many people as possible”. The aim is give a coin to everyone in the world so they can make the internet economy more accessible.

Worldcoin is leveraging both crypto and the possibilities of tech to expose people to the future of the world. I think thats awesome. Here’s how they plan to make it happen.

Basically, CEOs Sam Altman, Alex Blania and their team, want to give a free share of Worldcoin to everyone in the world. All you have to do is let them take a scan of your eyeball (your iris). In order to ensure that everyone gets their fair share, they’ve created the Orb. A $4000 spherical ball of metal that scans your eyeball (with the help of a human operator), creates a numerical code based on said eyeball scan, then adds it to a database as an ID that will prevent that same person from scanning again and receiving another free share. I’ve included infographics from Worldcoin’s website that describe this process below.

Seems pretty safe to me. They aren’t storing the scan of your eyeball, they’re simply creating an ID of it using a unique code. No one could know what your embedding is. It just ensures that if you’ve already claimed your share, you won’t be able to scan your eye to get another. The orb will know. As will the orb operators — humans who are tasked with not only signing users up through the orb, but educating, collaborating and marketing within local communities across the world. Through this initiative, Worldcoin hopes to get more people involved in crypto, to create a real decentralized internet network where everyone can participate. This is unlike many trends in crypto that we’ve seen as of late.

Currently they have around 25 orb operators onboarding people in 12 different countries across Europe, Asia, South America and Africa. The best part is that they given orb operators autonomy on how they’d like to build their community around WorldCoin in their specific area. In Chile they have an orb operator who employs a team of 20 people to onboard and educate people about the future possibilities of tech and crypto. As a more human-centered approach, it exciting that more and more people will be exposed to possibilities they didn’t even know existed.

Maybe it seems crazy. But I think its genius. How cool is it that we can use this coin to build communities in our area where we’re educating people about the future, giving them free money and exposing them to software and technology that half the world doesn’t even know about. It’s exciting, to say the least. And it is the need of the hour. After all, they seem to be the only crypto startup ensuring a fair share to every human. Their goal to “increase individual empowerment and equality of opportunity on a global scale” seems possible with the way their project is moving.

In many ways, WorldCoin is the path for the rest of the world to get into crypto without having a large amount of assets or connections. To me, this seems like a no brainer. But many crypto writers across the net are stuck on one thing: privacy concerns.

Now I’ve read all over the Internet about WorldCoin. Most articles or blogs I’ve read are focused on the most glaringly obvious aspect that I’m sure the team is grappling with: privacy concerns. Everyone is writing about privacy concerns. Don’t give away your eyeball, they say! I suppose it is sort of dystopian to think about 1 billion people scanning their eyeballs for a startup. But I think people are just fear mongering, they simply can’t believe that people would use technology to do some good in the world. But honestly, some people just don’t care about their privacy, why would they care? And why would they even begin to contemplate what giving their iris to WorldCoin even means? Especially if they’re being offered money in exchange, something many people desperately need.

So, I think everyone is worried about the wrong thing. People who need money don’t care about privacy. Privacy is a 1st world problem, concern isn’t even as serious as people are making it out to be. Is privacy more important than hunger? Maslow’s hierarchy, people. And I think it could shift the way crypto is currently looked at. If successful, this could open the door to crypto for a lot of people around the world who otherwise wouldn’t have the opportunity or the resources. Those who are educated and have the resources may have the time to think about the privacy concerns, but some people simply don’t have that luxury.

If they wanted to express concern about something, they should be talking about the 20% that Worldcoin will be keeping, 10% for investors and 10% for developers, production costs, etc. It make sense, because it is an expensive operation, but their $1 billion evaluation and vast amount of funds raised makes it even more important for them to be transparent and open about the economics of it all. They want it to be fair, after all.

Now the success of Worldcoin remains to be seen, but with all the money being poured into the project, it seems the stakeholders won’t accept failure. I’m hopeful for the future of Worldcoin and the advancements that will almost certainly come with. But I have some suggestions. Beyond complete transparency, Worldcoin needs to come up with a roadmap where they become irrelevant over time and the power is shifted to the owners and the global community.

Currently, Worldcoin is running like a traditional startup rather than a web3 company. They need to make this transition. This means online communities and blogs where people can come to read about the real stories behind Worldcoin. If you go to any web3 company page or discord server, you can read about the stories and projects they’re creating and supporting. I’d love to be able to read a blog where orb operators talk about the work they’re doing. It will make it more personable and relatable for the rest of the world.

Maybe now that Sam Altman understands the power of Web3 a little better, he’ll pass on the message to the Worldcoin community as well. See tweets from Altman below to understand what I’m talking about.

Now take these actions and replicate them at Worldcoin. Get people talking about this project the way they talk about NFT projects and new crypto ventures. Without it, they’ll seem like just another VC backed startup. I support UBI and other ways to provide for the basic needs of the people, if Worldcoin can be that, and I hope they will, we should all support this.