If internet is to be considered as a country then Internet is the biggest country in terms of population.
More than 5 Billion people live on internet who spend more than 400 minutes (6hrs) on an average per day.
#Worldcoin is an attempt to do a KYC of this population while people are upbeat about it but there are many issues that may arise in future.
Internet is today a country where people are:
-Earning
-Spending on goods and services
- Social Networking
- Transacting in finance
- In future meeting in Metaverse.
Why now?
AI is growing and its advance version will make it very difficult to distinguish between Humans and AI on internet.
SAM Altman is trying to identify humans on internet and like every single human is unique and cannot be duplicated. Similarly on internet every human should be unique and identified.
First idea was to take existing copy of the KYC people have but he found out that 50% of the world do not have a KYC document of any form.
Then came the idea of Orb that scans your Biometrics and establishes a digital unique identity with the help of various layers including:
1) Human DNA
2) Cryptography
3) Orb (A physical device)
4) Blockchain
5) Non Custodial Digital Wallet
Why people will give their Biometrics for no incentive?
Well for that Worldcoin smartly dropped few dollars as incentive. People are lined up in que to give their biometrics in return of few coins that are worth few dollars.
Every single human on internet in coming days will have a digital wallet and that wallet will be used to do almost all the things on internet that you do today. It is almost similar to using Gmail/ Facebook to log into various apps.
Worldcoin says the benefit is that while taking your Biometrics they don't ask for your "age, sex, location, address".
So login into internet app with Worldcoin app wont let others know your personal information.
THERE CAN BE A SCENRIO WHERE WORLD COIN DIGITAL WALLET WILL BE USED TO LOG INTO INTERNET FOR:
- Social media log in
- Bank log in
- Blockchain interactions
- DeFi interactions
- Credit Score on Internet (LIKE CIBIL)
- Sending crypto transactions
- Reputation score on DeFI
- Airdrops
- Signing a transaction (end of OTP)
Once every single human being on internet is identified and scanned there could be side effects of this huge data collection.
Imagine World Economic Forum finds huge value in it to control people behaviors on internet and makes it mandatory for the all the nations to implement Worldcoin as a gateway to access internet.
If that happens then more cases of people getting censored to use internet will rise. They could be censored if their thoughts are not aligned with mainstream.
For e.g. there were people who were against getting a covid shot. These people were not aligned with the mainstream. It will be very easy in future to get these individuals blocked to use internet until their thoughts get aligned with the mainstream.
All these censoring attempt are going to be seamless.
We all know that people are standing in queue to give their Iris in return of a coin. They are not aware what could be the possible scenarios in future.
You cannot stop the tech to flourish and you cannot predict how successful worldcoin will be in future but one thing is for sure you will hear more debates in future around:
FUNDAMENTAL RIGHT TO DIGITAL LIFE.
Kashif Raza.