Sam Altman’s nightmare fuel crypto project Worldcoin is rebranding to World Network, or World for short, less than a year after missing its 2023 sign-up target by a whopping 99.4%.

Altman announced the branding shift on Thursday along with a new version of World’s controversial iris-scanning ‘orb’ device. Powered by the Nvidia Jetson chip, this new generation of biometric boohockey is apparently “five times” more powerful and promises enhanced privacy and security features.

In a blog post, World said that it rebranded because “the name ‘Worldcoin’ no longer encapsulates the mission of the project—to accelerate every human.”

In October 2021, Worldcoin announced that it aimed to onboard one billion users by the end of 2023. However, the project only managed to scrounge up six million pairs of eyeballs, marking a 99.4% miss.

Read more: Worldcoin offers $15 off drink for ‘crypto players’ — needs your eyeballs first

On Thursday, Altman said that number had risen to 15 million — still 98.5% short of its 2023 target.

Worldcoin also unveiled World ID Deep Face, which claims to recognize AI and eliminate the problem of deepfakes.

World Network is currently banned in Spain and Portugal and under review in Argentina and the UK.

Got a tip? Send us an email or ProtonMail. For more informed news, follow us on X, Instagram, Bluesky, and Google News, or subscribe to our YouTube channel.

The post Worldcoin rebrands to World after missing eyeball target by 99.4% appeared first on Protos.

Worldcoin is 994 million users away from its goal of onboarding one billion people by 2023 and will need to scan an estimated 2,734 people each day to hit this figure by 2026.  

Worldcoin announced yesterday, July 10th, that it has verified 6 million users since its launch in July 2023. However, in October 2021, numerous outlets reported that Worldcoin had aimed to onboard one billion users by the end of 2023. It’s now July 2024.

Semafor reported last April that Worldcoin was suffering an orb shortage and that it has between 300 and 500 orbs in use.

Assuming it has 500 orbs in operation, Worldcoin would have to scan the eyes of 2,740 people per day to reach one billion users in two years. Taking into account the already onboarded 6 million users, 500 orbs would need to scan 2,734 people per day. 

Worldcoin claims it has manufactured 2,000 orbs already. Using this figure, each orb would need to scan roughly 700 people per day in order to hit 1 billion in two years. 

Worldcoin extends grants amid global restrictions

Worldcoin also extended its WLD token grant reservation program yesterday for another year. Users without a verified World ID initially had until July 2024 to reserve tokens that could then be redeemed at a later date.  

Read more: Worldcoin fails to shift ban from Spanish court

Indeed Worldcoin is still unavailable to users in the US, China, India, and the UK. Worldcoin has struggled to onboard users globally as regions began restricting the orbs and opening up investigations. Most of Europe and Hong Kong are probing Worldcoin.

However, in Kenya and South Korea operations have restarted after previous investigations into the orb were dropped. Worldcoin is still available in Germany where the orbs are reportedly manufactured in one factory. 

Got a tip? Send us an email or ProtonMail. For more informed news, follow us on X, Instagram, Bluesky, and Google News, or subscribe to our YouTube channel.

The post Worldcoin misses its 2023 goal of one billion users by 994 million appeared first on Protos.

Sam Altman’s WorldCoin and its controversial iris-scanning orbs are reportedly set to be kicked out of Hong Kong after being found to violate the city’s privacy laws by a data watchdog. But is the impending regulatory action as bad as it seems?

While the ban from Hong Kong is being celebrated by privacy advocates and Sam Altman distrusters, it may not be a permanent problem for WorldCoin. The reasons for being booted from Hong Kong by the Privacy Commissioner for Personal Data (PCPD) include:

• Relevant privacy notice and biometric data consent forms not being available in Chinese
• Insufficient transparency of the personal data policy and practices
• The fact that before the collection of personal data, participants weren’t clearly informed of how the data would be used

These issues all seem like they can be solved relatively simply: By translating instructions and terms of service forms into Mandarin and Cantonese, making policy practices more transparent, and informing any participants exactly how their data will be used.

However, the fact that these solutions are so obvious may point to the real problem for WorldCoin.

Read more: Worldcoin fails to shift ban from Spanish court

Never fixed

The fact that WorldCoin wasn’t already providing terms of service and instructions in Mandarin or Cantonese at its locations in Hong Kong suggests a more sinister reason for getting kicked out of Hong Kong, namely that WorldCoin has — possibly — been purposely providing the least amount of information to users and regulators as possible to take advantage of the biometric data that the public is unaware of.

There are plenty of ways that WorldCoin could work with the Hong Kong PCPD to mitigate risks and provide more transparency so it could offer their iris scanning orbs in Hong Kong again, but will it? It remains to be seen.

Got a tip? Send us an email or ProtonMail. For more informed news, follow us on X, Instagram, Bluesky, and Google News, or subscribe to our YouTube channel.

The post Hong Kong bans WorldCoin, but for how long? appeared first on Protos.

South Korean authorities are set to probe Sam Altman’s Worldcoin following complaints about the unorthodox methods the iris-scanning firm uses to collect its data.

According to South Korea’s Personal Information Protection Commission, its investigation, which began on February 29, will establish if Worldcoin has breached the Personal Information Protection Act. The authority said “if violations are confirmed,” it will “take action in accordance with relevant laws and regulations.”

The press release, translated via Google, said the South Korea Worldcoin investigation will look into “the overall collection and processing of sensitive information and overseas transfer of personal information.” It also noted that Worldcoin and ‘affiliates’ are reportedly collecting facial and iris data in 10 locations across South Korea. 

Read more: Worldcoin can damage economy and amplify fraud, Kenya MPs hear

Last year, Kenya launched its own probe into Worldcoin, voicing concerns that the company could impact the country’s monetary policy, cybersecurity, and increase fraud and scams. The UK, France, and Germany also probed Worldcoin last year.

Worldcoin tried to shake off its dystopian image when it announced plans to redesign its iris-scanning orb to look “much more friendly,” and similar to “an Apple product.”

The price of Worldcoin’s WLD token, however, hasn’t been negatively impacted. Indeed, it’s risen roughly 218% since February, jumping from $2.20 to $7 today. 

Got a tip? Send us an email or ProtonMail. For more informed news, follow us on X, Instagram, Bluesky, and Google News, or subscribe to our YouTube channel.

The post South Korea vows to ‘take action’ if Worldcoin violations are confirmed appeared first on Protos.

Worldcoin is reportedly temporarily pausing its eye-scanning operations across India, France, and Brazil, ceasing the use of real-world physical orbs to collect retina data in exchange for crypto, TechCrunch reports. 

Tools for Humanity, Worldcoin’s parent company, reportedly told TechCrunch that its real-world scanning operations were a “limited-time” event across certain markets this year. 

According to unnamed sources speaking to Money Control, Worldcoin temporarily stopped its offline biometric orb operation in India between three and four months ago due to overcrowding at certain sites. 

An anonymous mall management executive reportedly said, “There used to be so much crowding that sometimes police had to come to intervene and control the crowd. At one point, police even had to seize the orbs.” 

Reportedly, the orbs couldn’t handle a spike in demand, and operations were “scaled back” so that a “safe and orderly process” could be established.

Worldcoin wants to continue expansion

Worldcoin operations began in July this year, just after its global tour which kicked off in Tokyo three months earlier. The Sam Altman co-founded project has raised $250 million from backers. 

According to TechCrunch, Tools for Humanity reportedly rolled out the orb verification service in India before the global tour began and has plans to continue expanding its India operations until October 2023. 

Read more: US blocked Worldcoin CEO’s arrest, Kenyan MP says

A Worldcoin spokesperson told TechCrunch that it remains committed to “working with partners globally to ensure it meets regulatory requirements and provides a safe, secure, and transparent service for verified humans.”

Protos has reached out to Tools for Humanity for comment and will update this piece if we hear anything back.

Got a tip? Send us an email or ProtonMail. For more informed news, follow us on X, Instagram, Bluesky, and Google News, or subscribe to our YouTube channel.

Edit 12:28 UTC, Dec 22: Updated article to specify that the measures taken by Worldcoin are temporary, and removed reference to Worldcoin failing to reply to Money Control.

The post Eye-scanning Worldcoin stops eye scans in multiple countries, reports appeared first on Protos.

Sam Altman, the co-founder and former CEO of OpenAI, was fired by the board in a surprise move on Friday. Over the weekend, attempts to oust the board and reinstate himself were dashed — leaving Microsoft in a unique position to snatch up his tech talent.

On Friday, it was announced that Altman had apparently lost the confidence of OpenAI’s board for “not consistently candid” communications. Without warning, it fired the 38-year-old and appointed interim CEO Mira Murati.

“We are grateful for Sam’s many contributions to the founding and growth of OpenAI. At the same time, we believe new leadership is necessary as we move forward,” the OpenAI announcement read.

Following the news, Altman described the turn of events as “sorta like reading your own eulogy while you’re still alive.”

According to multiple anonymous sources, the board and Altman disagreed on AI safety, the speed at which to rollout new tech, and the commercialization of the company. However, OpenAI COO Brad Lightcap dismissed the rumors.

“We can say definitively that the board’s decision was not made in response to malfeasance or anything related to our financial, business, safety, or security/privacy practices. This was a breakdown in communication between Sam and the board,” Lightcap said in a staff memo.

OpenAI board withstands mass pushback to firing Sam Altman

The board’s coup was apparently led by co-founder and chief scientist Ilya Sutskever. But threats of a mass employee walkout and pressure from investors forced him and the board to reconsider their decision — along with immediate resignations by senior researchers and co-founder and president Greg Brockman.

Over the weekend, Altman was spotted visiting OpenAI’s offices to negotiate the terms of his return. He and Brockman demanded that all board members hand in their resignations and reinstate the co-founders.

The all-or-nothing proposition came with time to mull it over. But a Saturday 5pm deadline was missed; then another on Sunday.

By Sunday evening, the OpenAI board told employees they were here to stay — and Altman wasn’t coming back. As first reported by The Information, board members told staff a change-up in management was a necessary evil; the “only path” to “broadly beneficial” artificial general intelligence.

Read more: Alleged Worldcoin whistleblower steps forward, says they’re aiding authorities

What’s more, interim CEO Mira Murati would be immediately replaced with Twitch co-founder and former CEO Emmett Shear. “Today I got a call inviting me to consider a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity: to become the interim CEO of OpenAI,” Shear posted on X (formerly Twitter).

“After consulting with my family and reflecting on it for just a few hours, I accepted.”

The former Twitch CEO also added that the board’s decision to cut Altman wasn’t about safety disagreements. “Their reasoning was completely different from that,” he said. “I’m not crazy enough to take this job without board support for commercialising our awesome models.”

Microsoft smells blood in water, pounces

Meanwhile, OpenAI’s major investor Microsoft has made the most of the situation. CEO Satya Nadella announced late Sunday night that Altman, Brockman, and other prominent OpenAI members were joining Microsoft to form a new advanced AI research team.

“The mission continues,” Altman responded on X, confirming the news.

Other talent Microsoft managed to poach include Jakub Pachoki, former director of research, OpenAI’s former research scientist Szymon Sidor, and its former head of preparedness Aleksander Madry.

Read more: Opinion: Americans shouldn’t offer their eyeballs to WorldCoin

In his announcement post, Nadella added that Microsoft was still “committed” to its work with OpenAI. The tech giant is rumoured to have invested $10 billion into the startup, and together the firms are developing the Maia AI chip. Similarly, OpenAI’s new CEO Shear said that its partnership with Microsoft “remained strong.”

It’s rumoured, however, that the board’s decision to cut Altman was in part due to his recent work on a project called ‘Tigris.’ According to Bloomberg, the custom AI Tensor Processing Unit (TPU) chip would rival Nvidia and had already attracted considerable interest from VCs in the Middle East along with Microsoft.

Got a tip? Send us an email or ProtonMail. For more informed news, follow us on X, Instagram, Bluesky, and Google News, or subscribe to our YouTube channel.

The post OpenAI chief Sam Altman fired and hired in one weekend appeared first on Protos.

An alleged whistleblower of crypto project Worldcoin has announced that they have severed ties with the organization and is currently aiding authorities “in multiple jurisdictions” to conduct “justified probes.”

Worldcoin is led by CEO Sam Altman, who is also the founder of ChatGPT. In a YouTube video self-published on Wednesday, alleged former employee Nadir Hajarabi said they had “many reservations” about the project from the get go. Several red flags were evident “from day one” but multiple attempts to address them were apparently dismissed.

“I wrote to the legal team [and] the CEO, and the answers weren’t satisfactory,” the alleged Worldcoin whistleblower said in the six-minute video. “They only contributed in cementing the conclusion that I came to: this is a great mission and vision but a horrendous execution that deserves whatever will come next.”

Hajarabi is referring to Worldcoin’s idea of “providing universal basic income to everyone around the world simply because they’re a human being.” That core mission drove Hajarabi to stay at the firm — but the Worldcoin token, WLD, and the subsequent release of its white paper were deeply flawed, they said.

Read more: Kenyan committee given 42 days to investigate Worldcoin activity

The supposed Worldcoin whistleblower has obtained lawyers, who have advised Hajarabi not to elaborate further. The goal of the video, Hajarabi stated, was to make sure the world knew Worldcoin was no longer associated with their name.

“To anyone who is curious about Worldcoin,” Hajarabi said at the end of the video, “I urge you to thoroughly read what you are getting yourself into.”

Alleged whistleblower says they’re aiding authorities eye Worldcoin

Worldcoin aims to scan the irises of the global population in order to confirm online that they are human instead of an AI. Over 2.2 million people have given their biometric data to Worldcoin in exchange for its native cryptocurrency, the project claims.

Sam Altman’s dystopian crypto project launched in July worldwide — though notably not in the US, where it would likely be seen as a security in the eyes of the Securities and Exchange Commission. In response to its rollout, authorities across the globe were quick to investigate the project’s integrity and impact on citizens. Various concerns have been raised, chiefly data misuse and accusations that it exploited those in developing countries by paying just 25 WLD for their biometric data — around $35.

Worldcoin has been suspended in Kenya, one of its major markets, and a dedicatted committee has just 39 days left to probe the project. Worldcoin’s warehouse in Nairobi was raided as part of the ongoing investigation. Watchdogs in Germany, France, and the UK have launched their own investigations.

Hajarabi said in the video that multiple authorities in several jurisdictions are now benefitting from their alleged information. Protos has been unable to independently verify that Hajarabi worked at Worlcoin. We’ve reached out to Hajarabi and to the firm and will update this piece when we hear back.

Quotes in bold are our emphasis. Got a tip? Send us an email or ProtonMail. For more informed news, follow us on Twitter, Instagram, Bluesky, and Google News, or subscribe to our YouTube channel.

The post Alleged Worldcoin whistleblower steps forward, says they’re aiding authorities appeared first on Protos.

After three years in development, Sam Altman’s controversial eyeball-scanning crypto project Worldcoin is finally ready for launch.

The initiative, which has reportedly secured approximately $250 million in funding, and which promotes itself as a sure-fire way of “distinguishing humans from AI online,” is set to roll-out on Monday.

The token will initially be available in 35 cities across 20 countries. However, the US will not be among them due to regulatory uncertainty around cryptocurrencies and their potential for use in illicit activity.

Indeed, in an interview with Bankless earlier this month, co-founder Alex Blania was reluctant to explain exactly how the token will be distributed due to potential legal ramifications in the country.

“Many of the details we can’t talk about here [due to] regulatory uncertainty in the United States,” he said.

Read more: Opinion: Americans shouldn’t offer their eyeballs to WorldCoin

As reported by the Financial Times, Worldcoin says that it will keep somewhere in the region of 20% of all tokens it issues. It says it intends to use them to pay for “Orb production and initial protocol development . . . ecosystem development and maintenance.”

“On crypto, there have been a lot of bad actors and that’s a real shame … we have to earn people’s trust, which is why we’re explaining so much about how the technology works and the road map for decentralizing the company,” Altman said (via FT).

Is Worldcoin actually decentralized or transparent?

The company behind Worldcoin, Tools for Humanity, has been steadily enrolling individuals from all over the world, granting them 25 Worldcoin tokens in return for them logging their biometric data using one of Worldcoin’s melon-sized scanners or ‘orbs.’

Those who do were also given access to the Worldcoin Network, a marketplace that will one day apparently allow people to trade real-world goods and services for Worldcoin.

However, the project’s development has been plagued with controversy and doubt, not just around the question of exactly what people can expect to get in return, but whether or not it’s as decentralized and transparent as its founders claim.

As reported by Protos back in May, the protocol claimed to be totally open-source, however, this proved not to be the case as some infrastructure repositories and hardware specs weren’t viewable for public audit. The Worldcoin Foundation promised that it would be “opening more source code over time.”

It was also announced that the company controlling Worldcoin — Tools for Humanity — was to move its control to a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) and the Worldcoin Foundation. These entities are based in the Cayman Islands and the British Virgin Islands — two destinations popular with those seeking anything but transparency.

Got a tip? Send us an email or ProtonMail. For more informed news, follow us on Twitter, Instagram, Bluesky, and Google News, or subscribe to our YouTube channel.

The post Sam Altman’s Worldcoin launches as US users watch and wait appeared first on Protos.

No one at all should offer their biometric data to WorldCoin, regardless of which country they’re in. But those residing in the United States have even less incentive to do so.

If you’re unfamiliar with WorldCoin, it’s a cryptocurrency created by Sam Altman, the same entrepreneur and venture capitalist that brought the world OpenAI and ChatGPT. The protocol relies on what it calls Orbs — melon-sized silver balls that scan people’s retinas to acquire their biometric data. In most of the world, the sales pitch goes something like this:

If you scan your irises, you’ll get WorldCoin (cryptocurrency), which isn’t currently traded on any open marketplace. You’ll get to be involved with the WorldCoin Network, which will (supposedly and eventually) be a marketplace where people can trade real-world goods and services for WorldCoin.

But in the US, where WorldCoin would probably be considered a security by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the trade-off for your biometric data is even more bleak: you get nothing, you lose, good day.

One million people already gave up their biometric data for WorldCoin

An employee at WorldCoin might argue that the incentive is the product itself: there’s no need for token trickery or blatant bribery — don’t you want to be able to prove your “humanness” (a horrifying term thought up by the WorldCoin team)? By offering your unique biometrics to this private corporation (going by the laughable name Tools for Humanity) you’ll finally be able to prove you’re really you, in a world dominated by AI fakes.

But as the old adage goes, “If you’re not paying for it, you’re the product.” This is troubling when you consider that over a million people have already allowed WorldCoin to get hold of their biometric data, at least according to the self-reported numbers. What do they plan to do with this extremely personal data? It’s hard to say, but they have it now.

Read more: Fuck Worldcoin, crypto’s Theranos fever dream cooked up in Silicon Valley

In the dystopian future we walk closer towards everyday, I suppose there could be some economical method to determine if it’s worth granting access to the most unique and personal data you have to a multibillion dollar venture capital-funded company, but if the trade off is quite literally getting nothing — no bribe, no token, no way of clawing your data back, and no network to interact with — then what’s the business model?

Got a tip? Send us an email or ProtonMail. For more informed news, follow us on Twitter, Instagram, Bluesky, and Google News, or subscribe to our YouTube channel.

The post Opinion: Americans shouldn’t offer their eyeballs to WorldCoin appeared first on Protos.