Interview & Editing: Jack, BlockBeats

Organizing: Sharon, BlockBeats

In September, BlockBeats interviewed Worldcoin CEO Alex Blania, delving deep into the future development and layout of Worldcoin. Alex pointed out that Worldcoin will currently focus more on promotion and operations. At the same time, Alex expressed surprise at the enthusiasm for Worldcoin in the Asian region.

Related reading: "Worldcoin CEO Interview: Surprising Enthusiasm from Asian Markets"

The reaction in Tokyo was actually very surprising. It gave me a rocket launch-like surprise. We have very few devices in Asia, but the number of downloads and registered users is very high, which is amazing to me.

One month later, the Worldcoin team visited Asia again and had in-depth exchanges and communications with developers and users in South Korea, Hong Kong and other places. This Asian trip had a significant impact on the development strategy of the Worldcoin team. BlockBeats interviewed Tiago Sada, the product director of Worldcoin, again to discuss more issues related to Worldcoin, Orb and World ID, and to gain a deeper understanding of the real-world development of WorldCoin and related products and concepts, as well as potential development opportunities.

Beyond Bitcoin? "Worldcoin will become the most widely held cryptocurrency"

The current Worldcoin, like most tokens issued on Ethereum, is an ERC-20 token. Since its official launch at the end of July, the Worldcoin token WLD has attracted a lot of attention. Within a week of its co-founder Sam Altman's open letter, the WLD token price rose to a historical high of $2.43. As of October 30th, the WLD token price has fallen to $1.85.

However, Tiago believes that Worldcoin tokens are more than just a cryptocurrency. They hope to start as a governance token and gradually attract participants, including developers and ordinary people, into the ecosystem, and ultimately become a "local currency" that provides identity verification and promotes community democracy.

BlockBeats: Currently, the main function of Worldcoin App is to distribute WLD tokens to users. However, there are already many wallet products in the cryptocurrency industry. Why not directly send tokens to users' existing wallets?

tiago: Most people may know nothing about the cryptocurrency industry. Like most people, they shouldn't have to understand what a private key is, just as they only want to enjoy the benefits of the cryptocurrency industry. Whether it's sending dollars for free around the world or not involving complex thinking, we have come to a point where we can build a wallet, a world-class application that can do this.

But the question now is, will this application disappear? Users always need some kind of wallet to keep their World ID. Regarding World ID, there is one very important thing, and that is that it is self-regulating. This means that users live in a wallet that generates keys, holds the keys to the World ID, and then allows you to connect it to any application you want.

Like Discord and many other future applications, it supports World ID signature, and you can still use this wallet as a way to sign with World ID. What will change in the future is that World App is just the first wallet to support World ID. One thing we are working on is something we talked about in the white paper, but we will have news soon.

We are developing an SDK so that any other wallet can also allow users to hold their World ID on these wallets. In the future, if you want to use, organize, obtain your World ID, or even obtain your Worldcoin, you don't necessarily have to use the World App. This is just one more choice or option, you won't have many features, you will only focus on being the simplest one.

There are many other wallets that will focus on becoming the best wallet in a certain region, so they may have local payment methods, or some wallets will focus on professionals or similar things. In the future, there will be a complete wallet ecosystem supporting World ID, but as a user, you do need to have World ID on some wallets so that you can customize it yourself.

BlockBeats: This is equivalent to giving Worldcoin interoperability with the influence of Web3 or other types of ecosystems in the cryptocurrency industry, right?

tiago: Yes, even though we primarily distribute it through the World App today, it is still an Ethereum ERC-20 token. So you can actually send it and store it in any cryptocurrency wallet. We have many users who are deeply involved in technology, and they simply apply for their allocation through the World App, then send it and store their tokens in other wallets such as MetaMask or Rainbow, which is really great.

Therefore, the token has achieved super compatibility with virtually anything related to Ethereum and is issued on Ethereum L1. We bridge it to Optimism, which is actually where we distribute it. So users can send it to Optimism, send it to any wallet compatible with Optimism, and they can also choose to bridge it to another network, such as using L1.

This idea is like, all of these are protocols, just like tokens are open, it is a protocol, you should not use World App or any of these things to use the protocol. We are just building, basically we are building the first application and the first device, which is Orb, and something that will bootstrap the ecosystem. But as we become more decentralized, there will be many applications and devices.

WLD Becomes Governance Token

BlockBeats: Currently, WLD still has a strong speculative nature and there is still a large gap between its UBI vision. What can people do with Worldcoin at the moment?

tiago: The first role of Worldcoin token is to become the governance token of the network. As the project becomes more decentralized, the token will play an important role in it. And Worldcoin is also the first, like other projects, to serve as a symbol of people's identity. But what's really interesting is seeing people around the world start using it for their own purposes.

A few days ago, I saw a picture of a country where you can pay with Visa, Mastercard, or Worldcoin. It's like that merchant decided you can now pay with Worldcoin. If the project continues to develop, Worldcoin tokens will become the most widely held cryptocurrency to date.

As for Bitcoin, I believe that only less than 1% or 2% of the population owns it. I don't know what will happen when 5%, 10%, or 20% of the population holds Bitcoin, and I believe that perhaps very interesting things may happen, and the community may have better ideas than me. But overall, the first role of tokens is the governance of protocols and networks.

BlockBeats: Yes, I remember you mentioned in your 2022 speech that we can no longer redistribute and airdrop Bitcoin, so we need to create another type of token.

tiago: Yes. What I mean is, this will be great. It's really crazy, generating this kind of impact like Bitcoin, held by only about 2% of the population. It really makes you think about what's happening in the world, or like 10% of the population getting a share of their assets for free, just for being human.

BlockBeats: I'm wondering what kind of ecosystem Worldcoin will have in the future. Will it mainly focus on identity verification, right?

tiago: Yes, I think the best way to think about Worldcoin is as a large network made up of unique or real people. Therefore, you will be able to build many things on this basis. Worldcoin tokens are like the local currency of this network. For beginners, it will serve many purposes in managing the protocol and the network.

But you can use it, almost like a social graph, and then build anything on top of it. It basically becomes a platform where, as a developer, if you integrate with it, you can know that people are unique and real humans. For example, they can still be anonymous, but you can know "hey, this doesn't seem like a bot".

Therefore, you can start doing a lot of really cool things, just like social applications becoming a more trustworthy place for interaction, financial services can also start doing some things. For example, under-collateralized loans or insurance, which is impossible today. Even businesses can start doing promotions. For example, when you first come to this coffee shop or try this application for the first time, you can get a free trial or free coffee.

Even more profound things can be done with this, such as elections, or DAOs or my community, or even at the national level, we can use this network to ensure that everyone only votes once. But at the same time, it can maintain anonymity. So it is a super powerful platform, with two important properties: it has a local currency, but everyone in it is a unique individual. So you can use it to build many cool things.

Worldcoin is the "Identity Ecosystem" of the AI world

Asia will become the main market for Orb deployment

BlockBeats: If I understand correctly, the team's main goal is to maximize the deployment of Orb in the Asian market, right?

tiago: Yes, this is correct for the entire world. However, the number of ORBs is limited, so we need to figure out what the deployment order of ORBs is in each country. This is not just about the number of devices. As I said, this requires a lot of promotion work, such as starting a new country from scratch and operating it permanently, which requires a lot of work to ensure that we are responsible. But the goal is definitely to bring the devices to these Asian countries as soon as possible.

BlockBeats: How many Orb devices do you estimate need to be deployed in the Asian market?

BlockBeats: And then, as you mentioned, this process is carried out in an open and transparent manner. I'm curious, does Orb need to be continuously updated, such as hardware updates, to prevent people from using it for improper purposes? What kind of plan do you need to organize the transition between these updates? Who will pay for these updates?

tiago: This is a good question. Generally speaking, you can think of the term Orb as an oracle, and you choose to trust it like some people do. In this case, the device tells you and gives you a test. Part of the decentralized roadmap should have many different providers. So Orb is not just a human tool device, but also many different types of hardware devices connected to our protocol.

And in this way, everyone will be a company, after all, everyone always hopes to have reliable equipment. For example, just like we as tools of humanity, are motivated to constantly improve Orb to ensure that the certificates we issue are trustworthy. As for the specific plan, I would say that at a high level, every manufacturer will receive protocol rewards for every verification they perform.

This is part of the decentralized roadmap we are currently developing. Therefore, you can align the ecosystem with incentives, just like in the Bitcoin ecosystem, where some companies' business models are designed to create the most efficient Bitcoin mining machines. In the Worldcoin ecosystem, there will be multiple companies building different validation devices that are not only as cheap as possible, but also as accurate as possible, so that the ecosystem actually values the credentials of the problem.

BlockBeats: During our last conversation with Alex, the CEO of Worldcoin, he mentioned that the reaction from the Asian market was surprisingly positive for the team. You just mentioned that the team may be rearranging their plans to focus more on Asia. What are your plans in this regard?

tiago: Yes, I believe that Asia is at the forefront of incredible technology, just as people are realizing and understanding cryptocurrency. In some countries, people have already been burned by it, while in others, people use cryptocurrency in their daily lives, but there are also many who have a better understanding of it.

With the combination of technological advancements and widespread adoption of concepts, cryptocurrencies have seen viral growth in many other places. For example, in places like Chile, I believe that over 1% of the population now owns a verified World ID. Just think, in the entire country, 1% of the population is already using Worldcoin, it's crazy.

However, at the same time, due to the current state of encryption knowledge and technological infrastructure, it will require more effort and time to promote and respond to it in the Chilean region. When we first brought Orb to Asia, whether it was in Singapore, Hong Kong, Japan, or Korea, you could see that its development became faster. They were full of vitality and even more so than other super energetic places.

Meanwhile, our leadership team includes several individuals from Asia, but we lack the necessary equipment and resources to expand there. As we promote Worldcoin in various regions around the world, we have encountered an interesting logistical challenge in the transportation of Orb devices. This means that you must be able to localize it into all different languages and support Worldcoin.

Therefore, what we are currently doing is localizing the entire product base into many of these languages. For example, when you see the wallet, you will be able to see it priced in yen or different local currencies, rather than priced in US dollars. This also applies to policies, where you want to notify different regulatory agencies in advance and introduce the project to them so that they are not surprised by such things. Therefore, launching any new market requires a lot of work.

Therefore, what we are doing now is readjusting or accelerating the schedules of many Asian markets so that people can reach them as soon as possible. At the same time, we see many people downloading the World App and telling their friends about the information of the application. They can now start booking their Worldcoin grants, and once they are verified, they will be able to trace and unlock them.

From the dashboard online, it looks cool. But in reality, it's just amazing to be able to bring it down to the ground, show faces to all these people and talk to them.

For example, I was talking to this girl, and I believe it was at a gathering in Korea. She was in Seoul, and her father initially told her about Worldcoin. Then they went to the launch event together. The father brought his daughter, who I think is a college student. They both passed the verification process, and then they planned to attend the gathering together.

BlockBeats: Besides Orb, Worldcoin, and World App, what types of AI+Web3 tools will the Tools For Humanity team produce in the future?

tiago: I believe that we can already make a significant impact with the current tools we have at our disposal. Even if we no longer control the Worldcoin protocol, we will continue to actively participate in the field like other teams. World App is one of our biggest products and will continue to be the largest and fastest-growing cryptocurrency wallet in the world, and we believe it will remain so.

We can use it to do a lot of really cool things and bring a lot of services to people all over the world. Orb is clearly our most iconic product today, and future iterations will continue to get better. Basically, we will build anything we need to ensure that humanity thrives in the age of AI. So as AI advances and we realize anything the world needs, AI will continue to elevate humanity and we will build it.

This is like a research laboratory where we build a series of technologies with this goal in mind. So now we are very focused on bringing Worldcoin, World ID, and World App to as many people as possible. We believe that with these three things, we can solve a lot of problems and not just solve problems, but create new exciting opportunities for the world. But if we need more things, then we will build them.

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