Vitalik Buterin Warns of Risks in OpenAI’s $22.5B Crypto Project

• Ethereum (ETH) creator Vitalik Buterin has voiced his concerns about a new crypto project called Worldcoin (WLD), which has a $22.5 billion fully diluted valuation (FDV) and utilizes an “Orb” to scan user’s irises.
• Buterin highlighted four major risks associated with the project, such as privacy, accessibility, centralization and security risks.
• He believes that the registry of iris scans may reveal personal information, and there is also the possibility of backdoors being added to the system or users’ phones being hacked.

Ethereum Creator Issues Warning on OpenAI’s $22.5B Crypto Project

Ethereum (ETH) creator Vitalik Buterin is weighing in on Worldcoin (WLD), a newly launched crypto project from OpenAI, the creators of ChatGPT. Worldcoin aims to be a decentralized database that verifies users’ identities by scanning their irises using a hardware “Orb.” According to Worldcoin, it plans on manufacturing 1,500 Orbs and deploying them into 35 different cities to meet the “global demand for World ID.” Hours after its official launch, the WLD token already has a $22.5 billion fully diluted valuation (FDV) and is up 33% since going live.

Buterin Highlights 4 Major Risks Associated With The Project

Potentially the most high profile and hyped crypto project of 2023, Worldcoin has attracted criticism for potential privacy risks, including from Ethereum’s Buterin who wrote a lengthy post on the new altcoin earlier today. According to Buterin, he sees four major risks to Worlcoin that are the most obvious:

1 – Privacy Risk

The registry of iris scans may reveal information. At the very least, if someone else scans your iris, they can check it against the database to determine whether or not you have a World ID. Potentially, iris scans might reveal more information.

2 – Accessibility Risk

World IDs are likely not going to be reliably accessible to most people unless there are an astronomical amount of Orbs all over the planet.

3 – Centralization Risk

The Orb is a hardware device and we have no way to verify that it was constructed correctly and does not have backdoors; hence giving way for The Worldcoin Foundation still having ability to insert backdoor into system letting it create arbitrarily many fake human identities.

4 – Security Risk

Users’ phones could be hacked; users could be coerced into scanning their irises while showing public key belonging someone else; 3D-printing “fake people” that can pass iris scan & get world IDs etc..are some other security threats specific or non-specific with this project .