Worldcoin’s product for ID verification, Orb, was launched as a tool for onboarding people in regions where traditional identification is not always available. However, the company faced public controversies and regulatory scrutiny due to the gathering of private data such as iris scans after it was called an ethically questionable project. According to the company, though, the service will not be cancelled but reinstated in 2024, after initial previews.
Worldcoin has temporarily retrenched its offline orb verification function for users in India after it previously started to stimulate the offline onboarding process in November 2023, paying rewards in its native token, WLD, to local Orb operators. According to a report, the company silently discontinued the orb verification process in India despite the crowds gathering in queues for Orb operators in some parts of the country. However, Tools for Humanity, the foundation overseeing Worldcoin, explained that from the start, the Orb was a limited-time access initiative in India, France, and Brazil.
In response, the company’s representatives explained that it plans to open its operation in India again in 2024, following initial previews. In addition, Worldcoin aims to develop and roll out a custom, safe, and orderly process that meets the demand for World ID in India.
The Orb is a system that scans the iris of humans to generate digital identities, launched after 18 months of experimentation. Following that, a series of centers were established worldwide to scan people's eyeballs. It can be downloaded from the World App by users for identity verification purposes, and at each one of these centers, the Orb scans the iris of the user and creates a unique digital World ID.
Scanning physical attributes has been used for identification in the past, through methods such as biometric imaging of faces and fingerprints. However, the use of iris scanning technology is still being evaluated, as its benefits are not yet clear. There are concerns that the lack of diverse training data may cause issues with accurately scanning the eyes of certain groups of people, such as those with Asian backgrounds. Moreover, it seems that this procedure is ambiguous.
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