Sam Altman’s Eye-Scanning Orb Has a New Look—and Will Come Right to Your Door
While the biometric-scanning Orb and the World network have their roots in crypto tokens, “crypto” wasn’t an oft-mentioned word during the event. Instead, Altman and Blania emphasized World’s blockchain service, digital asset management, and virtual communication tools.
Blania claimed during the press briefing that, in the future, World hopes to build the “largest finance network” on the planet.
In a separate interview with WIRED, Blania said that during regular Sunday meetings at Atlman’s house, the pair were inspired by the rise of PayPal. Similar to the way that Peter Thiel, Max Levchin, and others once pioneered digital payments and fundamentally changed online commerce—becoming billionaires themselves in the process—the World team saw themselves building out a similar network for tokens on a distributed network.
The World app, for now, is free for everyone to use. It’s free to scan your eyeballs, too. Tools for Humanity itself is venture-backed, and the foundation, in its land grab for the modern identity verification market and your personal biometric data, is focused on scale, scale, scale. Eventually, it may make money through processing fees, Blania said.
Most of Tools for Humanity’s expansion plans for now are in locations outside of the US, due to murky regulations around crypto stateside, the organization’s spokesperson told me.
If you use the Orb and compatible app in the US, it will scan and store your iris but won’t generate a crypto token for you.
Two and a half years ago, the Worldcoin project came under scrutiny for allegedly deceptive and exploitative practices in recruiting individuals to scan their irises. At the time, Blania attributed this haphazard behavior to the organization still being in its “startup” phase. In an interview with WIRED, Blania said the company is doing “like, a thousand things” to ensure a more rigorous consent process. This includes staffing an “operational team” in every market where World will be. He said there will be “explanations” in the World app for how the product works.
“And again, there is no data stored in any central place or anything,” Blania said.
In 2023, the service was also being investigated by governments in Germany, Brazil, India, South Korea, and Kenya over concerns about how it was storing and using biometric data. Kenya suspended Worldcoin enrollment entirely. South Korea fined the company. Worldcoin suspended its own service in India, Brazil, and France.
Blania said he believes World will relaunch in Kenya “sometime soon.”
When asked in the press briefing about the emphasis on Latin America as a market for expansion, such as through the partnership with Rappi for orbs-on-delivery, Blania disputed the idea that World was prioritizing Latin America over other locations.
“It’s just that we have limited resources, and there’s a natural sequencing happening,” Blania said. “We are similarly focused on Asia and other places. Argentina has been a fast-growing market for us, for example, and we’re excited about that.”
“But the project is literally called World,” he added.
After the keynote, Altman ran into the press room to wave and apologize for not being able to stay, then slipped away like a head of state.
