Worldcoin Admits That Requiring an Iris Scan Was Too Much. It Says It Already Found a New Way to Confirm User Identity

Worldcoin’s rollout in some countries didn’t go as planned. The company, led by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, initially allowed users to obtain tokens in exchange for verifying their identity by scanning their iris. However, in some European countries, iris data requires special protection.

Now, during its first major event in five years, the company outlined its next steps. First, it’s now simply called World, and its strategy will be less dependent on iris scanning, the feature that made it so popular.

World no longer requires your iris to confirm your identity. The company’s new identity verification system, World ID Credentials, provides an alternative to iris scanning. Users can now register without needing to interact with any of the Orbs, which were previously used for these scans. With this change, the company hopes to attract more users, especially those far from Orb locations.

But it’s also a shift from the way Worldcoin worked before. How does it ensure that users are truly unique? With a document that’s recognized by authorities globally: the passport.

However, not just any passport. The new system is currently available only in the U.S., Malaysia, and the UK, with other countries to follow in the coming weeks. The passport is a valid and globally recognized document, but not everything is that simple.

World wouldn’t be reliable if it allowed users to simply upload a passport photo, as it could easily be faked. For this reason, World ID Credentials will only work with physical passports with NFC technology.

World says it will keep its promise not to store any data outside the device. The passport verifies a person’s identity, and the company ensures the registration system doesn’t store any data outside the device. World states that information such as age and nationality will remain stored on the smartphone where the passport is registered using NFC.

Why does the company want to verify your identity? To combat deepfakes. Another innovation is World ID Deep Face, a tool the company developed to prove users are humans. The reality is that deepfake technology has advanced so much that it has become difficult to detect.

This tool is designed for video calls. World will allow video calling apps to integrate its SDK, enabling participants to confirm they are human.

A security layer managed by independent organizations. In addition to identity verification, World has implemented anonymized multiparty computing (AMPC), an open source security system to manage anonymized iris codes and World ID data.

World says it worked on this cryptographic protocol with the University of Nuremberg and UC Berkeley’s Center for Responsible Decentralized Intelligence.

However, the main news is that the World Foundation and Tools for Humanity will no longer participate in AMPC. In other words, they’re distancing themselves from the management of anonymized data to promote independence, while also adding an additional layer of complexity regarding the responsibility of each organization in the data management process.

Image | World

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