Altman, however, says the system is secure and the company will not store user data. Each image of an iris will be converted into a digital code, called IrisHash, which will be stored in Worldcoin’s database to verify future IrisHash and deny coins to known users; the images themselves will be deleted from the database. “We take a picture of your irises, we don’t even store it, we compute a code from it, the code is uploaded, but the image never is,” says Altman. “We don’t know more information about you than this picture.”

Right now, in fact, Worldcoin is running a pilot project, involving around 30 orbs in various countries, and storing a lot of data, including images of people’s eyes, bodies and faces and their three-dimensional scans, according to the company’s own. Promotional material. “Without it, we wouldn’t be able to fairly and inclusive donate a share of Worldcoin to everyone on Earth. But we can’t wait to stop collecting it and we want to make it clear that it will never be our business to sell your personal data, ”reads a blog post titled“ Privacy During Field Tests ”. In what Worldcoin calls its ‘field test phase’, these images are collected to improve the fraud detection algorithms fueling the orbs. This phase will likely continue until early 2022; data collected so far will be deleted once the algorithms are “fully trained”.

Alex Blania, who co-founded the company alongside Altman and Max Novendstern, says the Orb system allows for beneficial “incentive alignments”. Not only will people be drawn to the prospect of getting something for free, but an army of Orb Operators will actively recruit them to earn their rewards. (And in turn, Worldcoin hired people to recruit Orb operators, according to an ad posted on a Kenyan job bulletin).

Worldcoin itself will remain responsible for distributing the orbs, and also to kick out any operators who attempt to tamper with the devices in order to extract unwarranted rewards (for example, by scanning someone twice). Could Orb Operators get their rewards by surreptitiously scanning the irises of clueless people who have never heard of Worldcoin? Blania says the company is testing fraud detection systems, adding that it cannot be “extremely specific”. But, in theory, the company could use metrics like whether the user has actually claimed Worldcoin or made a transaction, in order to detect unwanted behavior and weed out sneaky orb-ers.

During the pilot, more than 130,000 users claimed their Worldcoins, 60,000 last month. To date, the project has used 30 Orbs managed by 25 entrepreneurs in various countries, including Chile, Kenya, Indonesia, Sudan and France. Blania estimates that the production of new orbs will be increased to 50,000 devices per year, a number on which the projection of one billion users is based.

The launch date for the actual coin, which will be released as an ERC-20 token on the Ethereum blockchain, has yet to be released. A person familiar with the matter said a launch is expected to take place in early 2022. For Altman, this will only be the start of a “wonderful and great social experiment” on the power of networking, as well as a dress rehearsal. UBI’s future ambitions. “One thing I do believe is you do an experiment, you do a first thing, and then you learn and you’ll find all kinds of things about what works here and what we can improve,” he says. “There will be many answers as to how something like this might come close to a UBI.”