According to Tools for Humanity, the corporate behind Sam Altman’s iris-scanning project Worldcoin, there have been indications that it could soon partner with major technology and financial firms Bloomberg.
“There are some natural things in the way we could and will work together,” said Alex Blania, CEO of Tools for Humanity, regarding a possible partnership with OpenAI, “but we are not ready to announce that yet. Blania added that the company had been in “discussions” with PayPal, but there had been no “concrete” developments.
A spokesperson for Tools for Humanity said Assets: “We have nothing further to share at this time.” Both PayPal and OpenAI immediately responded to requests for comment.
A collaboration with a serious technology company wouldn’t be Worldcoin’s first. Last yr, the corporate worked with Okta, a cybersecurity company, to develop a “Sign in with Worldcoin” authentication service that developers could use as a substitute or along with similar tools from Apple and Google, in keeping with Bloomberg.
Three arrows took part in Tools for Humanity’s $25 million funding round in October 2021, which valued the corporate at $1 billion, in keeping with funding tracker Dealroom. FTX co-founder Sam Bankman-Fried was also an early investor.
What is Worldcoin?
According to its website, Worldcoin is a “free, privacy-preserving, open protocol designed to be the world’s largest public identity and financial network.”
The aim is to authenticate an individual’s “humanity” within the age of bots and deepfakes by asking users to stare right into a sphere, which then converts an individual’s biometric image into an impenetrable sequence of numbers. Combined with an algorithm, the code verifies an individual as a singular human and provides confirmation via a World ID that’s stored in a single’s World app. As a reward for the scan, users can airdrop Worldcoin tokens, currently priced at around $5.
“At this point, the question is not whether there will be proof of personhood – the question is whether it will be open-source, decentralized and privacy-preserving?” Tiago Sada, product lead at Tools for Humanity, said previously Assets.
However, the orbs have been banned in various European countries as a consequence of concerns about data collection; Germany is the one market where Worldcoin can currently collect biometric data. Additionally, others have identified that Altman, co-founder and chairman of Tools for Humanity, is selling an answer to problems accelerated by one other of his firms, OpenAI.
The level of recent interest within the plan stays unclear, because the market capitalization of Worldcoin tokens has almost halved prior to now month, to around $942 million, in keeping with data from CoinGecko.
To increase adoption, the Worldcoin Foundation, the corporate behind Worldcoin, last week announced World Chain, a permissionless open source Layer 2 that is predicted to launch in mid-2024. The blockchain will likely be closely linked to the Worldcoin protocol and can provide preferential treatment to users with a World ID.
