Buterin criticized Altman’s World project for threat to pseudonymity

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin expressed serious concerns about the World project, Sam Altman’s brainchild! This is an extremely interesting technological dispute about the future of digital identification.

To remind, the project was formerly called Worldcoin and was created by Tools for Humanity company under the leadership of Altman and Alex Blania. Their technology proposes to distinguish people and artificial intelligence agents. By scanning the iris and creating a unique identity on the blockchain.

Buterin acknowledged that World’s approach using zero-knowledge proofs to confirm human identity could theoretically protect social networks, voting, and internet services from bots without compromising privacy issues.

However, the key problem is that such a system still comes down to the principle “1 person – 1 identifier”. Buterin warns, I quote: “In the real world, pseudonymity requires multiple accounts. Even with cryptographic protection, we risk approaching a world where all your activity is tied to a single public identity”.

Buterin gives a concrete example. The US government already requires students and visiting scholars to open access to their social networks for checks on “hostility”. Similarly, the state could force disclosure of all connected accounts under a unified digital ID.