Everyone is confused.

From the official announcement of a major update to the Worldcoin token WLD being officially listed on the trading platform, it only took 3 hours.

Not only the sense of urgency brought by sudden launch, but also the terrifying indifference of users after release.

Unlike Sam's other product ChatGPT, which is "no admission required", Worldcoin is really difficult to get started with. And with Sam Altman's shift from absolute UBI to a tendency towards proof of personhood (PROOF OF PERSONHOOD) for Worldcoin, it may take some time to see the significant impact of Worldcoin's AI-driven UBI on the real physical world, just like ChatGPT.

UBI, Universal Basic Income, refers to a system where every member is eligible to receive a certain amount of money on a regular basis without any conditions or qualifications. The money is distributed by a collective organization to meet the basic living needs of the people and to ensure basic human rights are met.

Moreover, based on the current situation of receiving one WLD per week, it is premature to discuss meeting basic living needs.

Despite frequently attending various cryptocurrency conferences, integrating many mainstream protocols, and using a Web3-style token "airdrop" method, Worldcoin has not received much favor from the cryptocurrency community based on its performance on the first day of token listing, even though it currently has a significant number of supporters for its token.

Centralized Issuance

With the halo of OpenAI, both the cryptocurrency and technology communities have high expectations for Worldcoin. However, the token launch of Worldcoin is not much different from a regular token sale, except for the sudden incident. The only thing worth noting is that only five market makers (MMs) - even if borrowed - obtained a large number of tokens during the entire token launch process.

A world-class project with a UBI initial goal, the launch of the token is a top priority event, which involves listing on numerous mainstream trading platforms and providing sufficient liquidity for market makers, allowing community users in the mainstream crypto field to purchase - the only group that can purchase WLD at the first time, and may also be the group that needs UBI the least.

The maximum circulation of WLD at the time of launch is 143 million, including: 43 million WLD distributed to users verified through Orb in the pre-launch phase of the project; 100 million WLD loaned to market makers operating outside the United States (due after 3 months).

Although there are over 2 million registered users, with an initial maximum circulation of 143 million WLD, according to data provided by Worldcoin officials, the current circulating amount of WLD is only 107 million. This means that market makers currently hold 93.3% of the token supply, which is more than 14 times that held by the community. The centralization of token distribution in the initial stages far exceeds that of mainstream crypto platforms such as Binance's IEO projects.

Not only that, it seems that the Worldcoin project team has also secretly set a "fair" price for WLD through market makers. 5 market makers borrowed WLD tokens from World Assets for a period of 3 months and returned them upon maturity. If unable to return, they must purchase WLD tokens according to the following formula: $2 + (0.04 X loan amount / million).

The simplest and roughest calculation is that if these five market makers evenly split the 100 million tokens, it means that each of them will receive 20 million WLD tokens at a price of 2.8.

Aside from the common practice of secretly pricing assets, VCs, as a common link in the cryptocurrency industry, naturally cannot be absent. Worldcoin, which has received multiple rounds of large-scale financing, has naturally allocated enough tokens to its investors. According to previous reports by LD, the valuations of Worldcoin's first two rounds of financing were $1 billion and $3 billion, respectively. If calculated at the current price of $2 per WLD, Worldcoin's market value would be $20 billion. Top investment institutions such as a16z and Coinbase Ventures, who participated in Worldcoin's investment, undoubtedly received excess returns.

Token distribution: Community fund 75%; Investors 13.5%; Team 9.8%; TFH reserve 1.7%

Among the many investors in Worldcoin, we can also see the founder and CEO of the bankrupt cryptocurrency exchange FTX, Sam Bankman Fried (SBF), and the well-known bankrupt cryptocurrency fund Three Arrows (3AC). Even KyleL Davies, co-founder of 3AC, made a bold statement today, saying that "if my investment theory is correct, 3AC's venture portfolio will be the best performing portfolio in 2023. Congratulations to Worldcoin."

Market Maker Discussion

Although the official website of Worldcoin states that they believe in the inherent worth and equality of every individual, the fact that market makers hold over 95% of the actual initial distribution has sparked a lot of discussion.

For example, a 400,000 WLD order placed on the Bybit platform during the early stages of its launch sparked widespread discussion. This is because 400,000 WLD accounted for approximately 40% of the total amount claimed by the community at that time.

BlockTower's founder Air Paul believes that the current situation of WLD is a common manipulation model in the cryptocurrency market. Paul also tweeted a long explanation of this situation:

·Through this common cryptocurrency market manipulation model, a valuation of over 10 billion US dollars can be created for startups.

·Lock the capital of founders and investors, and a small portion of tokens will be airdropped to retail investors.

·Then give more tokens to the market makers and incentivize them with options to maintain the token price within a limit.

·The result is that retail investors see the prices and liquidity on the trading platform, but the tokens that match the price are less than 5%, usually less than 1%. The media is eager to report "project success", VCs mark them on their books, and raise new funds based on false marks.

·Then, 3-18 months later, when the tokens were unlocked, it is believed that these retail investors, whose tokens were supposed to be worth more, were hit by insider selling.

Paul suggests that there may not be a real "conspiracy" because some "participants" may not truly understand the game they are involved in. This is the power of incentives. Even without any explicit coordination or collusion, market manipulation and volume brushing may occur. This is because, if the incentive mechanism is designed properly, participants may naturally take these actions to maximize their benefits.

Wintermute CEO Evgeny Gaevoy stated that choosing a mature market maker is more suitable for token issuance than using AMM. He also gave an example here, indicating that using AMM would require about 40% of the project's capital to ensure a good user experience. This poses too much risk for the project party.

除了公平，聊什么的都有

translates to

Other than fairness, everything is up for discussion

Regarding the situation where WLD has extremely low token circulation and extremely high token fully circulated market value, many users have expressed that this is similar to the infamous "Sam coins" Serum, Oxygen, and MAPS on Solana due to SBF.

Founder of Framework, Vance Spencer, also sarcastically remarked that the $30 billion FDV launch was one of the most fair things he has ever seen.

Actually, as early as the ETHCC period before WLD was released, community members jokingly designed a project called Buttcoin, which directly targeted Worldcoin. In the introduction of the project, it was jokingly stated that Buttcoin is more meaningful than the existing identity solution because anyone can take a picture of your eyes, but you only send your butthole picture to people you trust.

After the token sale, on-chain detective Zach pointed out that...

·The most shocking thing is how the Worldcoin team boasted about how many users they have, when in reality, they have been exploiting people in developing countries. This has even led to the issue of black market sales of Worldcoin accounts. Here is more information on the matter.

·Zach quoted a message from Coindesk, stating that Worldcoin will increase its internal share from 20% to 25%. In an early introduction video of Worldcoin, it claimed that WLD is better than BTC, as BTC is only controlled by a small number of wealthy people.

美国用户不能使用 World APP

US users cannot use World APP

There are still many users on Twitter who post meme images related to eyeballs and irises, indicating that they are not willing to sacrifice their privacy for tokens.

The Bitcoin community also does not buy into the WLD scanning method, believing that Worldcoin represents slavery, while Bitcoin represents freedom.

Vitalik praised Worldcoin's use of Layer2, ZK, and decentralized governance technologies and concepts in "What do I think about biometric proof of personhood?" He also expressed concerns about Worldcoin's privacy, inability to scale massively, centralization, and security. He also expressed hope to create open and democratic mechanisms to avoid centralized control by project operators and domination by wealthy users, which is particularly important in decentralized governance.

For individual users, facing the current situation released by WLD, would you choose to join this global personality proof consensus protocol condensed by WLD every week?

Anyway, purely from the current progress, it seems difficult for Worldcoin to achieve its ambitious goal of acquiring 1 billion users by 2023.

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