My understanding of the crypto project WorldCoin

During this period, apart from Memecoin and Bitcoin ecosystem, perhaps the hottest project is WorldCoin.

In fact, this project appeared very early. I remember that I saw this project at the end of last year or the beginning of this year.

When I first saw this project, two points impressed me deeply: one is that the founders and investors of this project are all well-known figures; the other is that the project claimed at the time that its goal was to become the world's digital currency.

In terms of its goals, I think existing cryptocurrencies (such as Bitcoin, Ethereum, etc.) have been pushed by enthusiasts or the community to try to go this way.

However, judging from subsequent practice, on the one hand, the effect is not obvious, and on the other hand, it seems that everyone does not care whether cryptocurrency must be used as a digital currency for global use - now in the crypto ecosystem, few people mention this goal, and few people brag about being able to pay with Bitcoin or Ethereum in XXX places.

I think the reason for this is probably due to both regulatory and technical reasons.

In terms of regulation, becoming a globally circulated currency will actually challenge regulators around the world, which will face huge obstacles.

Technically, I think that the current blockchain technology is not enough to support the currency that circulates globally. In addition, I don’t think this is the killer feature of blockchain technology. Its real killer feature is to create a series of new virtual assets that are trusted by the world and a set of technology-based credit mechanisms and applications that are trusted by the world. These are far more meaningful than currency.

So its goal didn't appeal to me very deeply.

More importantly, I think that judging from the goals of this project, the founder of this project still lacks understanding of the social significance and production relations of blockchain technology - or to put it simply, his understanding of blockchain technology is the same as many people's: he treats it as a technology and uses it wherever it can be used in real life, while ignoring the disruptive nature of this technology in terms of social significance.

Later, I paid attention to this project because it launched an ambitious campaign: collecting irises on a large scale around the world, using them to prove personal identity, paying these people with cryptocurrency, and claiming that the collected irises would be quickly destroyed.

Many people appreciate this ideal, but in my opinion, first of all, this way of thinking is a centralized way of thinking from head to toe. I would not care about other types of projects, but as a crypto project, this is what I dislike the most.

To collect personal information on a large scale globally requires the organization and mobilization of large-scale human, material and financial resources, and requires a strict organization and an efficient operating system.

This organization and this mechanism are the driving force and foundation to ensure the implementation, execution and success of the project. Individuals in this project are almost just passive receivers and listeners.

This idea reveals the founder's way of thinking: he is using top-level design and then promoting the development of the project from top to bottom.

This way of thinking is very suitable for traditional information technology, such as big data, the Internet of Things, and artificial intelligence, but it is not suitable for blockchain.

In my opinion, the core and essence of the crypto ecosystem's way of thinking must be to promote projects from the bottom up - mobilizing and motivating the masses.

When Madi, who was a student at the University of Helsinki in Finland, first saw the magical thing called Bitcoin on the Internet, he could not suppress his inner curiosity. He wrote an email to Satoshi Nakamoto asking him how a person who could not program could contribute to the project. Satoshi Nakamoto's reply was simple and powerful: download Bitcoin and run it.

Such a simple action that does not rely on any third party brings individuals together in this ecosystem. This is the most powerful manifestation of bottom-up promotion of the project.

It should be noted that I am not saying that blockchain projects have no organization or system. What I am saying is that in the promotion and development of the project, in addition to the leadership of the organization, the success of the project is absolutely inseparable from the community's proactive mobilization and activities, and the community's bottom-up feedback and influence on the organization.

In addition, the practice of collecting irises for this project always makes me feel uncomfortable.

This discomfort mainly comes from two aspects:

First, in my opinion, a good encryption project always avoids touching personal identity information as much as possible.

In the Bitcoin white paper, Satoshi Nakamoto directly regarded the practice of traditional financial institutions requesting personal identity information as a violation of personal privacy.

For this project, I can understand it because the application scenario of the project needs to face real individuals and requires real people to participate and avoid being attacked by witches.

There are many ways to achieve this. Satoshi Nakamoto used the POW mining method, which made attackers bear certain costs and expenses to avoid Sybil attacks to a certain extent. Now there are more advanced zero-knowledge proofs that can also be used to prove a person's identity.

It is hard for me to accept that all these methods that can avoid directly asking for personal identification information are achieved by directly collecting personal information, especially the most important biometric information.

In addition, the process of collecting irises makes it difficult for me to trust that it can foolproofly protect my such private biological data.

It claims that the data will be destroyed - a bunch of Internet giants have repeatedly said that they will strictly protect user privacy, but these giants have been slapped in the face time and time again.

Even if the project itself really wants to destroy these data, can this idea really be thoroughly and effectively implemented in different countries, different geographical environments, different ethnic cultures, and different living habits around the world?

Even if there are no problems with these, for such a project with such obvious centralized operation mode and issuing coins, when the scope and impact of this project become larger and larger, and more and more people are involved, will regulators around the world let it go? In particular, how will it face regulation from the United States?

Finally, let's be 100 times more optimistic. If this project is ultimately successful, the key to its success may not be because it uses blockchain technology, but that it is an extension of a traditional Internet company . Moreover, this success may have to be at least somewhat coordinated with the US government. Otherwise, how can it face US supervision?

When I think of this, and think of Altman's affable and cooperative attitude toward members of Congress at a recent hearing, I feel uncomfortable. This founder's style is really a world away from Vitalik.

So it seems that there is nothing I appreciate about this project.

Of course, I don’t deny that it may eventually succeed and may indeed make people money, but in the crypto ecosystem, I still prefer to participate in projects with a stronger crypto flavor.