Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin released a new blog post on Monday where he shared some of his concerns regarding Sam Altman’s newly released Worldcoin. Altman is the CEO behind the viral ChatGPT creator, OpenAI. Moreover, his new crypto project has seemingly drawn some concern from Buterin.
The blog post was titled, “What do I think about biometric proof of personhood?’ and saw Buterin discuss the new mainnet launch. Subsequently, he discussed the crypto’s authentication mechanism, called proof-of-Personhood (PoP).
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Buterin Speaks on Altman’s New Worldcoin Project
One of the most important people in the tech sector this year is undoubtedly Sam Altman. The man with connections to Twitter’s Elon Musk, Altman, was the most notable face behind the arrival of OptnAI’s ChatGPT. The viral chatbot sensation set off an AI arms race, and seemingly created its own market. Now, the CEO has set his sights on the crypto market.
Specifically, amidst the project’s arrival, Ethereum’s Vitalik Buteirn has shared his concerns about Sam Altman’s Worldcoin project. Specifically, Buteirn has used a recent blog post to comment on the project’s PoP authentication system.
Indeed, Worldclaim claims that it is able to authenticate a user without requiring personal data or authoritative bodies. Instead, the project will acquire a “World ID” from users who scan their iris with the Orb, a new device developed by Worldcoin.
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In his recent post, Buterin notes that this could face a host of potential issues. Among those, are privacy concerns, accessibility questions, and worries about security measures. Additionally, Buterin expresses his concern over what information comes from scanning an iris. Specifically, if someone could gain information from scanning another person’s iris. As well as logistical concerns with obtaining an Orb device.
Moreover, Buterin states that “we have no way to verify that it was constructed correctly and does not have backdoors.” Additionally, remarking that “the Worldcon Foundation still has the ability to insert a backdoor into the system, letting it create arbitrarily many fake human identities.”
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Conclusively, Buterin recognizes that no clear solution is available. “There is no ideal form of proof of personhood,” Buterin states. Conversely states social-graph-based, general-hardware biometric, and specialized-hardware biometric solutions as alternatives.
“It does not seem like specialized hardware systems can do quite a decent job of protecting privacy,” Buteirn writes. “However, the flip side of this is that specialized hardware systems introduce much greater centralization concerns.”