By
Chimamanda U. Martha
April 25th, 2024
Riding in its current wave of success, Worldcoin has decided to spread its tentacles. Presently, the company is looking at expanding to Mexico and Singapore.
Worldcoin, co-founded by OpenAI’s Sam Altman, has shared an update about its digital identity platform World ID. According to a company statement, the upgrade includes making significant integrations with five prominent tech firms. The tech firms that the crypto project has now added support for regarding the use of its World ID for user authentication, include Telegram, Reddit, Shopify, Minecraft, and Mercado Libre.
Recall that the World ID protocol was originally launched about four months ago, and added support for Discord, Talent Protocol, and Okta’s Auth0. However, it was recently upgraded to a newer version World ID 2.0, which uses a multi-tier verification system. Per the company, the new version does its bid as it seeks to differentiate between bots and real humans.
Worldcoin Rebuilds World ID’s MO
Tiago Sada, head of product for Tools for Humanity and a core contributor to Worldcoin, has shared some details about World ID 2.0. He simply said in an interview:
“We’ve rebuilt the way it works.”
In his explanation, Sada revealed that the latest version of the World ID has three levels of authentication. They are the casual, standard, and high levels.
For the casual level of authentication, a user simply needs to download the Worldcoin app and create a World ID. In this stage, there is no need for the user to do a retina scan yet to prove they are humans. Their profiles will work regardless.
The standard verification requires the user to be scanned by one of the company’s retina-scanning orbs. So after creating a profile, a user must scan their irises to verify their identity.
The last stage of verification, which is the high stage, adds facial recognition as another layer of security.
Addressing Privacy Concerns and Security Issues
It is noteworthy that the company has made efforts to attend to privacy concerns about its technology. To this end, Sada explained that creating a World ID doesn’t even require users to use their real name or identification. They only have to prove their uniqueness, according to Sada. He said partly:
“You can use it completely anonymously; the only thing you’re doing is proving you’re unique.”
Sada also acknowledged the potential risks of being able to create multiple profiles by a single individual across different devices. He explained that a user can only do that until it is time to get scanned by an Orb. At this point, the user can only have one ID.
The rationale behind that, Sada claims, is to help prevent people from creating multiple identities which can be used to rig voting systems and carry out all sorts of fraud.
More Expansion Plans
Riding in its current wave of success, Worldcoin has also decided to spread its tentacles. Presently, the company is looking at expanding to Mexico and Singapore. And, according to Sada, there are also plans to bring its operations to more countries in Asia.