I help Chinese people do Worldcoin KYC in Africa and earn 20,000 yuan a day

Recently, Zhao Zhao (pseudonym), who had hired black people to do Worldcoin KYC in a country in East Africa and then resold the accounts to domestic users, returned to China. The products that users found on Xianyu that had Worldcoin KYC were sourced from third parties like Zhao Zhao in Africa.

But now this business is not easy to do. Worldcoin is officially launched, the currency price is transparent, and there is no gray area. In addition, due to the recent political instability in a certain country in East Africa, he suspended the KYC business and returned to China.

This business lasted for more than three months. At the most, one could earn 20,000 yuan a day at a local promotion point that could do iris verification. But the most profitable days only lasted for two weeks. That was in May, when Worldcoin was the hottest in China. At that time, the growth of new local users was beyond common sense, and the operator soon discovered the trick.

The following is Zhao Zhao’s narration:

This business became difficult to do later. Before I returned to China, one of our employees was arrested by the local police and was released only after paying nearly 250 yuan (the local minimum wage is about 900 yuan per month). The police arrested him on charges similar to those used in China, such as "disturbing public order."

What we did was to do KYC on behalf of others, and we did it for about three months. I had a full-time job in the local area, and this business was a part-time job. The business was not difficult. I found the local operators’ promotion points, and the local employees I hired took the hired migrant workers to verify the iris KYC on behalf of others. Initially, the salary for these migrant workers was $1. Later, as more teams did third-party KYC verification and fierce competition, their salary increased to $3.

99% of this is driven by Chinese people. Competition is fierce. Local Chinese see that there is money to be made, so they flock to do this. On the one hand, the wages of migrant workers are rising, and on the other hand, the head wages of local employees are also rising. In the early days, the cost of opening an account was about US$6 to US$7, and later it rose to US$9 and US$12.

The later increase in fees mainly came from tips to store staff. They found that there was always one person who brought several people over to scan, and then brought several more people over, which was very strange. We had to tip the store staff a little before they would let us continue.

Worldcoin was most popular in China in early June. At that time, we would find about a hundred people to verify at each operating point every day, but this did not last long. After about a week, the local operators found something wrong. Worldcoin's push model is that one operator manages a large area. A country is divided into five or six large areas, and each large area will have a dozen or twenty stores. About every two or three stores is monopolized by a Chinese third party like me. Regional operators found that the data of some stores was much higher than that of other stores. Once they checked, they knew where the trick was. In order to rectify this "gray industry", the verification business in the East African country where I was at the time was temporarily scheduled for one week. I estimate that there are about a dozen Chinese teams doing this, so there are thousands of fake users a day.

The general public in this country has limited knowledge of Web3, and Worldcoin has not done a good job of promoting it in my country. Before doing this business, I once passed by one of their promotion points that could scan irises. That point was similar to the kind of sheds that are set up for community activities in domestic communities. I didn't realize what they were doing at the time. It was only after I got home and saw someone posting related content on Twitter that I realized it was a Worldcoin promotion point.

If we, as third parties, did not find people to register, the actual number of registrations for a local store would be around ten per day. This data was obtained from my observation: about one real user could be seen on-site every hour to verify the registration. There are several reasons for the small number of real users: First, the local infrastructure is very poor, and the mobile phones used by local people are not like our domestic smartphones. The operation of Web3 applications requires high mobile phones and network speeds. Second, local people have no knowledge of Web3. For example, the migrant workers we hired would not accept U settlement remuneration, and we gave them local banknotes.

It seems that the East African country where I live, including most of Africa, is not a suitable place for Web3 application promotion. I have also helped Debox to promote it locally before. They contacted Chinese people from all over the world to be product ambassadors, but the effect was average. I live in the local area and basically don’t see other Web3 projects being promoted on a large scale. The locals are more cautious, and if your project becomes big, the local government will come to share a piece of the pie.

When we do this, we have to consider the input-output ratio and the trend. Worldcoin should have started to promote in Africa in October last year, but the project was not popular at that time. It was not possible to make money at that time. It was not until this year when OpenAI became popular in China that this project was brought up again. This business opportunity was completely discovered by Chinese people in May and June.

If you calculate, when the cost is $6, one account is sold for $40, and one push point has 100 people, then you can earn 20,000 yuan. We hired a general manager at the time, and he led five teams. These five teams went to various points every day, and one point could run 80 to 100 accounts.

In the early stage, the project owner would also condone our behavior of finding someone to do KYC on our behalf. After all, there is user growth and good data. In the early stage of Web3 projects, investors still need data to raise money. But in the later stage, the project owner must distance themselves from our behavior and no longer allow so many fake users. In fact, the demarcation point is that the project owner released the news that the project will be launched at the end of June. In these African countries, the data rise is too strange. Moreover, Worldcoin itself emphasizes a real KYC, and each person has only one iris.

There is a saying on the Internet that our behavior and the promotion of Worldcoin in Africa are the new colonialism of Web3. I think people who say this are "foolish". One or two dollars is just the money for a few meals for the locals.

What Worldcoin does is to give money to people in third world countries. I think from this perspective, this project is great. But if the project wants to go far, there is still a lot to do.

I work in Africa and have observed the local Web3 ecosystem. I think a lightweight wallet is a more suitable Web3 project for promotion. Lightweight wallets can adapt to the local infrastructure level, and wallets may meet the needs of local people. For some African countries, their local currency exchange rates are very unstable, and holding a certain amount of mainstream virtual currency can resist risks. This wallet can cooperate with the government during the promotion process, and then give local users a certain amount of rebates, which should be effective.