Vitalik Buterin believes the Worldcoin team will need several years to find solutions to all identified issues.
Vitalik Buterin, co-founder of Ethereum, has spotlighted four critical challenges facing Worldcoin, the brainchild of OpenAI's CEO Sam Altman.
Buterin's insights focus on privacy, accessibility, centralization, and security, the issues he believes will demand significant attention and time to adequately address.
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Buterin, known for his extensive contributions to blockchain technology, began his blog post by acknowledging the potential value of Worldcoin's proof-of-personhood system.
However, he flagged the potential privacy issues stemming from the project's use of iris scanning technology, warning that it could inadvertently collect sensitive information such as a person's gender, ethnicity, or health status.
Another point of concern for Buterin is the accessibility of Worldcoin's technology. Despite the company's plan to deploy around 1,500 Orb devices across 35 cities worldwide, Buterin doubts the scalability of this approach, stating:
While there are billions of smartphones, there are only a few hundred Orbs. Even with much higher-scale distributed manufacturing, it would be hard to get to a world where there's an Orb within five kilometers of everyone.
In addition to accessibility, Buterin highlights the risk of governmental intervention with the Orbs. A country could prohibit the devices or misuse the technology to exert control over its citizens. Furthermore, malicious manufacturers could compromise the devices, leading to the creation of false human identities.
The final issue Buterin brings up is security, particularly the risk of AI-generated photos or 3D prints of fake people passing the iris approval process. He also mentions the potential for World IDs to be rented, sold, or even lost due to phone hacking.
Despite identifying these challenges, Buterin acknowledges that addressing these issues won't be a simple or swift assignment. He commends the Worldcoin team for taking on this task and predicts it will take several years to find a solution that truly works.
It is worth noting that on July 24th, Worldcoin introduced its native token WDL.
