Vitalik Buterin Raises Concerns Over OpenAI’s Worldcoin Crypto Project

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Vitalik Buterin Raises Concerns Over OpenAI’s Worldcoin Crypto Project

Vitalik Buterin, co-founder of Ethereum, has raised concerns over OpenAI’s new crypto project, Worldcoin, which launched its mainnet this week. In a blog post, Buterin highlighted four major issues with Worldcoin’s user authentication system, called Proof-of-Personhood (PoP).

Worldcoin claims it can authenticate its users without storing personal data or relying on a central authority. To obtain a World ID, users must scan their iris with a device known as an Orb. Buterin argued that this system has potential issues with privacy, accessibility, centralization, and security. He said that scanning one’s iris could potentially release more information than intended, and that World IDs won’t be readily accessible to everyone. Furthermore, the Orb is a hardware device, and Buterin alleges that we have no way to verify that it was constructed correctly and does not have backdoors. He also expressed security concerns with Worldcoin given that users’ phones could be hacked, and they could be coerced into giving out their iris scans.

Buterin acknowledged that there is no perfect solution to overcoming these issues. There is no ideal form of proof of personhood, Buterin wrote. It does seem like specialized hardware systems can do quite a decent job of protecting privacy. However, the flip side of this is that specialized hardware systems introduce much greater centralization concerns.