Sam Altman can have been asked to go away OpenAI, but his involvement in crypto project Tools for Humanity, which is constructing Worldcoin, stays uninterrupted, a source near the project told TechCrunch.
Altman has “consistent and beneficial” engagement with Tools for Humanity and “that just isn’t expected to vary,” the source said. The source added that Altman remains to be chairman and co-founder of the project, confirming that the knowledge on the project’s website is up up to now.
News of Altman’s ouster sent the Worldcoin token, WLD, plummeting to a low of $1.84 on Saturday, however the token recovered over the weekend and is currently trading on par with previous levels at $2.40, per CoinMarketCap data.
Worldcoin raised $115 million in May in a Series C round led by Blockchain Capital. As of March, Altman was on the project’s board, but was not involved in day-to-day operations.
“Proof of personhood is becoming increasingly necessary within the rapidly advancing age of AI,” The Worldcoin Foundation told TechCrunch late on Monday. The team supporting Worldcoin remains to be focused on the project’s mission, “constructing a more human web and a more accessible global economy through World ID, a privacy-enhancing strategy to confirm humanness and uniqueness online,” the corporate said.
Worldcoin is well-known for its controversial Orb hardware, which scans peoples’ irises and assigns them an ID that lets users access Worldcoin’s application and a digital passport. The verification process is supposed to prove individuals’ identities and stop anyone from making multiple accounts.
The crypto project has faced pushback from some countries, especially Kenya, which banned Worldcoin from scanning any more of its residents’ eyeballs on concerns that the corporate did not inform users in regards to the data security and privacy measures it had taken, and the way the information collected could be used or processed.
Worldcoin has also faced backlash from critics, who allege the corporate targets developing countries with laxer privacy rules. The project gives most participants (outside the U.S. and another countries) 25 WLD tokens, price roughly $58.5, in exchange for signing up, and that has spurred its critics to call it exploitative.
That hasn’t stopped individuals from signing up. Since launching to the general public 120 days ago, greater than 2.46 million people have signed up for Worldcoin, in accordance with its website. Over the past seven days, greater than 65,200 recent accounts have been created and the project has averaged 137,000 wallet transactions every day.
Tiago Sada, head of product for Tools for Humanity and a core contributor to Worldcoin, previously told me that specializing in developing countries and providing free tokens was “fair” because most tech projects deal with emerging markets first, on condition that they’re the “easier ones to operate in.” And Altman must be around to assist for the foreseeable future.
Read more of our ongoing coverage of Sam Altman’s firing from OpenAI and the following fallout: