About my understanding of the encryption project WorldCoin

During this time, apart from Memecoin and Bitcoin ecology, I am afraid that 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 saw this project for the first time, there were two things that impressed me deeply: one is that the founders and investors of this project are famous people; 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 take this path.

But judging from the later practice, on the one hand, this 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 few people in the encryption ecosystem mention this anymore The goal is gone, and few people show off that they can pay with Bitcoin or Ethereum in XXX.

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

** In terms of regulation, to become a currency in global circulation will actually challenge the regulators of countries around the world, which will face huge obstacles. **

**Technically, to become a currency in global circulation, I think at least the current blockchain technology is not enough to support it. **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 globally trusted and a set of technology-based credit mechanisms and applications that are globally trusted. These meanings are far greater than currency.

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

More importantly, I think that from the perspective of the project’s goals, the founder of this project still lacks understanding of the social significance and production relations of blockchain technology—or in layman’s terms, **he and many people The understanding of blockchain technology is the same: it is to regard it as a technology, and use it wherever it can be used in real life, while ignoring the subversion of this technology in terms of social significance. **

Later, I paid attention to this project because it launched an ambitious activity: collect iris on a large scale around the world, and then use it to prove the identity of individuals, and pay these people cryptocurrency, and also claim to collect The iris will be destroyed quickly. **

Many people appreciate this ideal, but in my opinion, first of all, this way of thinking is a whole set of centralized way of thinking from head to toe. As a project of other categories, I don’t care, but as an encryption project That's what I dislike the most.

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

This organization and this set of mechanisms are the driving force and foundation to ensure the implementation, execution and success of the project. The individual is pretty much just a passive receiver and listener in this program.

From this idea, we can see a way of thinking in the founder's heart: 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, Internet of Things, and artificial intelligence, but this way is not suitable for blockchain.

In my opinion, the core and essence of the way of thinking about encryption ecology must be to promote projects from the bottom up---to mobilize and motivate the masses.

When Madi, who was a student at the University of Helsinki in Finland, saw the magical thing of Bitcoin for the first time on the Internet, he couldn’t restrain his inner curiosity. He wrote an email to Satoshi Nakamoto and asked him how a person who can’t program can give this When contributing to the project, Satoshi's reply was simple and powerful: download Bitcoin, run it.

It is such a simple action that does not rely on any third party to reunite individuals into this ecology. This is the most powerful manifestation of driving projects from the bottom up.

It should be noted that I am not saying that the blockchain project has no organization or system, but 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 mobilization and activities of the community , is inseparable from the bottom-up feedback from the community and its impact on the organization.

Also, the way this project collects irises always makes me feel uncomfortable.

This discomfort mainly comes from two aspects:

One is that 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 personally identifiable 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 actually many ways to achieve this. Satoshi Nakamoto adopted the method of POW mining, allowing attackers to bear certain costs and costs to avoid Sybil attacks to a certain extent. There are now more advanced zero-knowledge proofs that can also be used to prove a person's identity.

It is difficult for me to accept that all these methods that can avoid directly requesting personally identifiable information do not directly use the most straightforward collection of personal information, or the most important biological information of individuals to achieve this.

Plus, the process of **collecting my irises hardly convinces me that it's foolproof in protecting my biodata, which is so private. **

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

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 is no problem with these, for such a project with such an obvious centralized operation mode and currency issuance, when the scope of coverage and influence of this project is getting larger and larger, and the population involved is increasing, regulatory agencies around the world will Does it let itself go? In particular, how will it face regulation from the United States?

Finally, we are 100 times more optimistic. If this project is really successful in the end, I am afraid that the key to its success is not because it uses blockchain technology, but because it is an extension of a traditional Internet company, and I am afraid that this success will at least have to do some collusion with the US government to some extent, otherwise how will it face US supervision?

Thinking about that, and Altman's affable, co-operative approach to lawmakers at recent U.S. congressional hearings makes me uncomfortable. This founder's style is really far from Vitalik's.

So there seems to be nothing I appreciate about this project.

Of course, I don’t deny that it is possible to succeed in the end, and maybe it can indeed make people make money, but I still prefer to participate in projects with a stronger flavor of encryption in the encryption ecosystem.