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In Today’s Newsletter:

🤿 Deep Dive: The Future of Digital Identity

• What’s Worldcoin?

• What are Orbs?

• Facts, Figures, and Opportunities for Businesses

🥫 Catch up on AI & Web3

💡 Food For Thought

Reading time: 6 min

Worldcoin’s Vision

Worldcoin was founded three years ago by Alex Blania and Sam Altman to create a new identity and financial network owned by everyone. The rollout began on the 24th of July, 2023.

The Worldcoin Whitepaper states:

“If successful, Worldcoin could considerably increase economic opportunity, scale a reliable solution for distinguishing humans from AI online while preserving privacy.”

Facts and Figures

• Worldcoin has raised over $250 million in funding from investors like Andreessen Horowitz and Khosla Ventures.

• The company has already deployed its Orb devices in over 20 countries.

• Worldcoin plans to distribute 100 billion Worldcoin tokens to people around the world.

What’s Worldcoin?

Worldcoin is a new cryptocurrency project using iris scanning technology to create a global ID system.

Worldcoin's Orb is a device that scans a person's iris and generates a unique identifier.

This identifier is then used to create a World ID, which is a digital identity that can be used to access Worldcoin's cryptocurrency network.

Worldcoin claims that its iris scanning technology is more secure than traditional biometric identification methods, like fingerprints and facial recognition. The company also says that it will not store any personal data about users, except for their iris scans.

Challenges

• Worldcoin has been criticized for its privacy practices.

• Some people are concerned that the company could use iris scans for other purposes, like tracking people's movements or advertising to them.

• Worldcoin has also been criticized for its lack of transparency. The company has not released much information about its algorithms or how it plans to use the data it collects.

Opportunities for Businesses

Worldcoin could partner with businesses to offer iris scanning as a way to verify the identity of customers. This could be useful for companies that need to verify the identity of people who are opening accounts, making payments, or accessing sensitive information.

Worldcoin could partner with governments to offer iris scanning to verify citizens' identities. This could be useful for governments that need to verify the identity of voters, taxpayers, or beneficiaries of social programs.

In addition to ID verification, Worldcoin's iris-scanning technology could also be used for

• Advertising,

• Healthcare,

• and Security.

Businesses could develop new applications for this technology that could improve the lives of people around the world.

Applications and Emerging Use Cases

• Social networks: Bot protection, community moderation, content attribution.

• Voting: DAO governance, government elections, online polls, census.

• Financial services: Undercollateralized lending, card fraud, compliance.

• Customer incentives: Loyalty programs, coupons, referrals, free trials.

• Marketplaces: Reputation, fake reviews, fake transactions, scalper prevention.

• Money distribution: Government welfare, non-profit aid, scholarships, crypto airdrops, UBI.

Takeaways from Worldcoin’s Model

1. Innovation is Crucial: The cryptocurrency market is saturated, but Worldcoin's unique distribution method shows that innovation can still make a project stand out.

2. Risk and Reward: Worldcoin's ambitious approach could result in massive rewards, but the inherent risks, from regulatory to logistical, are equally high.

3. Consumer Trust is Key: For Worldcoin to succeed, gaining and maintaining consumer trust, especially in terms of privacy and security, will be essential.

Let’s Recap

Only time will tell whether Worldcoin will succeed, but the company can potentially disrupt how we think about identity and money.

Businesses looking for new opportunities in these areas should watch Worldcoin. 👀

🤿 Dive Deeper

1. Worldcoin Whitepaper [Link]

2. Where Will the Orbs be available? [Link]

3. What Do I think about biometric proof of personhood? by Vitalik Buterin [Link]

Gems 💎

🎧 Podcast: Bankless with Sam Altman & Alex Blania - The Worldcoin Launch [Link]

• Why Worldcoin is Needed

• Proof of Personhood & Crypto

• Worldcoin Roadmap

🎙 TED Talk: The Transformative Potential of Web3 by Ashi Bhat.

• Our data has become the world's most valuable currency, fuelling the success of corporations like Big Tech. As our lives become increasingly digital, this data becomes a key to our identities and can profoundly influence our reality.

• But, with emerging technologies like blockchain and Web3, we can take back control of our data and digital identities and use them to shape a future where technology serves the greater good. [Link]

🔭 Report: The State of AI in 2023 by McKinsey. [Link]

• It’s still early days, but gen AI is already widespread.

• Leading companies are already ahead with gen AI.

AI-related talent needs shift, and AI’s workforce effects are expected to be substantial.

🥽 What is Spatial Computing? [Link]

When Apple released the Vision Pro, they started a movement for Spatial Computing.

But what is spatial computing? I did a bit of digging, so you don't have to.

News

👁 Former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried’s bail was revoked before the October trial. [Link]

🤖 Microsoft’s New AI Outperformed GPT-4, And It’s FREE. [Link]

🔬Everything You Need to Know About Base - Coinbase's new product, Base, aims to create a scalable solution to onboard the masses. [Link]

🐦 Elon Musk’s Twitter (now X): Everything you need to know, from layoffs to verification. [Link]

📌 What else?

• Zoom rewrites its policies to make clear that your videos aren’t used to train AI tools. [Link]

• AI and Web3- How are they connected? [Link]

• Liechtenstein Blockchain Act: How can nearly any right and asset be tokenized based on the Token Container Model? [Link]

Tool

🚀 Omnivore - Read it Later app with an outstanding reading experience 

• Save articles, newsletters, and documents and read them later — focused and distraction-free.

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💡Quote of the Week