Web3: Worldcoin's $100MM raise, as it reaches 1.7MM eyeball scans hashed onchain
Web3: Worldcoin's $100MM raise, as it reaches 1.7MM eyeball scans hashed onchain
Blade Runner's tears in the rain
Gm Fintech Futurists —
Welcome to our Web3 newsletter, covering DeFi, digital assets, NFTs, and the emergence of the financial metaverse. Today we highlight the following:
FINTECH & INSTITUTIONAL: Worldcoin, Co-founded By Sam Altman, Is Betting The Next Big Thing Jn AI Is Proving You Are Human
CURATED NEWS
Based on your feedback, we know that many of you are interested in reviews of companies or projects highlighted by our community. Leave a comment below with a company of your interest and we’ll do a deeper take on it later!
Web3 Short Takes
Worldcoin, Co-founded By Sam Altman, Is Betting The Next Big Thing In AI Is Proving You Are Human - TechCrunch
Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, is poised to raise $100MM for Worldcoin, a platform that offers crypto assets in exchange for a scan of a user's eyeballs. The company had previously raised $125.5MM from a16z, Tiger Global, Variant, Khosla Ventures and Coinbase. The company claims a three-part mission — (1) World ID, a decentralised proof of personhood protocol; (2) a global currency; and (3) a currency exchange. And we see some real adoption — 1.7MM people have already taken the plunge.
Worldcoin has created its own hardware — an orb with an optical system for iris scanning. See here for the technical details.
Once you download the World App and have your iris scanned, that scan is added to a database of "verified humans", and Worldcoin generates a cryptographic hash linked to your identity. Notably, the actual scan is not stored, but the hash can be used in the future to verify one's identity. Worldcoin also offers an SDK waitlist, which will help developers integrate its API into their platforms.
To facilitate transfers, Worldcoin generates a zero-knowledge proof, a method that verifies the validity of a statement without revealing the statement itself. While alternative identity verification applications like Yoti, which raised £10MM recently, require submitting an ID and a real-life photo, Worldcoin asserts that the iris scan is the optimal way to solve sybil resistance.
Worldcoin brings together a collection of popular high-tech ideas, involving the use of zero-knowledge proofs for transaction verification, providing complimentary cryptocurrency to users upon sign-up, like Binance's $10 sign-up bonus or DeFi yield-farming, and using alternative methods for identity verification with soulbound NFT characteristics.
All these standalone concepts are quite reasonable, but their combination invokes a sense of unease akin to the dystopian visions portrayed in literature. Like an uncanny valley device. Consider Philip K. Dick’s "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?", the book on which Blade Runner is based, which describes a future society that grapples with the blurred lines between humanity and AI. Worldcoin is the real-life implementation of the Voight-Kampff test — a tool for distinguishing real humans from synthetic replicas.
Look, we agree that authenticity, provenance, and identity are absolutely needed to combat the digital hallucination wave brought on by generative AI — Altman’s other project. And Web3 protocols are uniquely suited to such self-custody. Biomarkers are a stronger identity answer than registration with a government, though many ethical and cultural barrier stand in the way of widespread use.
Curated News
Financial Institutions and Adoption
⭐ IRS Claiming $44B From FTX Bankruptcy - Cointelegraph
Binance Wants To Connect Crypto Funds With Institutional Capital - Blockworks
Blockworks Raises $12M At $135MM Valuation - Blockworks
China Launches National Blockchain Center To Train Half A Million Specialists - Cointelegraph
DeFi and Digital Assets
⭐ Maker To Spark ‘New Explosion of DAI’ With Custom Lending Market - Blockworks
Uniswap Weighs Proposal to Enrich Token Holders, Switch On Liquidity Pool Fees - CoinDesk
Memecoins Continue To Dominate DEX Volumes As Crypto Market Slides - The Defiant
Chronos DEX Attracts $230MM With Modified Ve(3,3) Tokenomics - The Defiant
Circle Backs USDC With Shorter US Treasurys, Worries US Government Will Default - Blockworks
Blockchain Protocols
⭐ Bitcoin’s ‘BRC-20’ Explosion Sends Users Scrambling For Options, Including Lightning - CoinDesk
Neutron Becomes First Cosmos Chain to Launch On Replicated Security - Blockworks
Ethereum Developers In ‘Final Stages Of Planning’ Next Major Upgrade - The Defiant
Bitcoin Developer Calls to Block Ordinals, BRC-20 Tokens From Network - Decrypt
NFTs, DAOs and the Metaverse
⭐ Artizen Fund Raises $2.2MM to Create NFT Cultural Artifacts - Decrypt
Alibaba Says ‘Open Sesame’ To Web3 - CoinDesk
NFT Brand Pudgy Penguins Raises $9MM For IP Play - Blockworks
Aragon ‘Repurposes’ $177MM Treasury Into Grants Program - The Defiant
Elon Musk Sends Milady NFT Price Soaring With Twitter Meme - The Block
Postscript
Thanks always for your time and attention!
Share with your friends:
Read our Disclaimer here — this newsletter does not provide investment advice and represents solely the views and opinions of FINTECH BLUEPRINT LTD.
Want to discuss? Stop by our Discord and reach out here anytime. Leave a comment below with a company of your interest and we’ll do a deeper take on it later!