Ethereum Creator Vitalik Buterin Raises Eyebrows Over WorldCoin's Proof-of-Personhood: 'Iris Scans Might Reveal More Information'

Vitalik Buterin, co-founder of Ethereum ETH/USD, on Monday, expressed his concerns about Sam Altman-backed WorldCoin‘s proof-of-personhood system as the cryptocurrency goes live on Binance.

What Happened: Buterin in a blog post wrote, “Proof of personhood is valuable because it solves a lot of anti-spam and anti-concentration-of-power problems that many people have, in a way that avoids dependence on centralized authorities and reveals the minimal information possible.”

The Worldcoin Foundation today announced that the Worldcoin project completed the protocol’s migration to the OP Mainnet.

This development will allow for the expansion of Orb sign-ups for World ID across 35 cities in 20 countries globally. Altman, the co-founder of Open AI, the organization responsible for the development of ChatGPT, is also closely involved with Worldcoin.

Buterin said the significance of proof of personhood, stating that its absence could make decentralized governance vulnerable to manipulation by "wealthy actors and hostile governments."

To address these concerns, many applications today rely on government-backed identity systems like credit cards and passports. However, Buterin acknowledges that these systems sacrifice privacy and can be easily exploited by governments themselves. He lists four major risks associated with such systems: privacy breaches, limited accessibility, potential centralization, and security vulnerabilities.

Discussing the privacy aspect, Buterin said, “Potentially, iris scans might reveal more information.” He highlights concerns regarding accessibility, stating, “World IDs are not going to be reliably accessible unless there are so many Orbs that anyone in the world can easily get to one.”

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Why It Matters: In terms of security, he points out various vulnerabilities, saying, “Users’ phones could be hacked, users could be coerced into scanning their irises while showing a public key that belongs to someone else, and there is the possibility of 3D-printing ‘fake people’ that can pass the iris scan and get World IDs.”

Buterin noted that there is no perfect form of proof of personhood, and instead suggests that a combination of different approaches may be the most effective solution.

“The most obvious, and greatest, potential privacy leak that any proof-of-personhood system has is linking each action that a person takes to a real-world identity. This data leak is very large, arguably unacceptable large, but fortunately, it is easy to solve with zero knowledge-proof technology," he added.

Price Action: At the time of writing, Worldcoin was trading at $2.69, up 61.24% in the last 24 hours, according to Benzinga Pro.

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