Sam Altman’s Worldcoin discontinues offline Orb verification services in India: MC Exclusive

Sam Altman’s crypto project Worldcoin stopped offline ‘Orb’ verifications and biometric identity-based user onboarding in India nearly 3-4 months back

Sam Altman’s crypto project Worldcoin stopped offline ‘Orb’ verifications and biometric identity-based user onboarding in India nearly 3-4 months back, multiple sources told Moneycontrol. This was in the wake of huge number of people queuing up at designated locations amid the hype to get registered and earn free Worldcoin (WLD) tokens.

Worldcoin’s ‘Orb’ is a spherical hardware device that is used to create a user profile on the Worldcoin app ecosystem, using the unique biometric identity of the user through eyeball scanning.

At the time of Worldcoin’s launch in late July 2023, India was one of the countries listed on the site with 18 on-ground Orb verification locations, mainly in Bengaluru and Delhi NCR, across shopping malls and metro stations. Bengaluru had three locations, including Mantri Square Mall, Vegacity Mall and The Galleria Mall. The rest were in the Delhi-NCR.

Apart from India, Orb services were eventually planned to be rolled out in over 35 cities across 20 countries. Recently, India was entirely dropped from this list and is no longer on Worldcoin’s website.

A source privy to the development said, “Orb verification services in India were temporarily scaled back as the company is working to roll out a bespoke, safe and orderly process to register in India that could cater to the massive demand.” The orbs deployed were unable to cope with the surging demand, the source added.

This was corroborated when Moneycontrol visited two of the three locations in Bengaluru. The mall management staff in both locations said that overcrowding became a major challenge as many people would queue up inside the malls to get registered.

“Once Worldcoin and Orb were in the news, it became more popular. There used to be so much crowding that sometimes police had to come to intervene and control the crowd. At one point, police even had to seize the Orbs,” said a mall management executive at one of the locations, requesting anonymity.

The crowd mainly included collegegoers, whose interests were also driven by the free WLD tokens the company was offering on signups, apart from the curiosity to see the technology work.

A young salesman at the same mall, who didn’t want to be named, said he and some of his colleagues were able to get the tokens by signing up, and later converted them into cash.

“There was a craze to sign up. I got the tokens and could convert them into cash through their app. I got it in two tranches. Once I got around Rs 4,000, and the next time, Rs 5,000,” he told Moneycontrol.

Once a user’s World ID is created on signing up, he can access the tokens and other services through the World App to make payments or withdraw.

Each time a signup happened and a World ID was created, the user would get about 25 WLD tokens, according to media reports. Although new World ID signups were discontinued, thousands of World App downloads continue to happen in India every day.

Emailed queries sent to Worldcoin did not elicit any response at the time of publication. This article will be updated to reflect any comment or statement from the company.

Crypto expert and Bitinning founder Kashif Raza told Moneycontrol that there were issues with location permissions, as such activation campaigns would involve third-party marketing agencies as well.

But Raza remains confident that Worldcoin will be back in India soon given the market opportunity here.

While India presents a huge market opportunity for foreign crypto players, there have been concerns around regulatory uncertainties and high taxes on virtual digital assets (VDAs) in the country. Crypto traders and users have to pay 30 percent tax on income and gains from VDAs and 1 percent TDS on every buy and sell transaction worth over Rs 10,000.

The Worldcoin project

The Worldcoin project was started by a company called Tools for Humanity (TFH), founded by Altman (also the CEO of OpenAI), Alex Blania and Max Novendstern in 2019.

The digital ecosystem of Worldcoin involves three key elements: World ID, Worldcoin token (WLD) and World App. World ID, the user’s personalised biometric digital identity, gets created through Orb verification, which the company claims are privacy-preserving.

The WLD token is a crypto token or digital currency that will initially be distributed among users for free as they sign up, defining them as unique humans. The currency can be used for transactions and payments through a World-ID compatible app called World App. World App serves as a digital wallet, as well.

Till date, Worldcoin has created over 2.6 million World IDs, with the World App being accessed in nearly 120 countries. Argentina, Chile, Germany, Portugal and Spain reported some of the highest numbers of World IDs created, according to the company’s website.

New business updates

As of December 2023, Worldcoin has already inked new agreements with trading firms, is partnering with businesses and retailers, listing apps on the Worldcoin App Store, and has integrations in place with Reddit, Discord, Shopify, Minecraft and Telegram.

Worldcoin’s parent, TFH, is backed by Andreessen Horowitz’s crypto arm a16z, Bain Capital Crypto, Blockchain Capital and Distributed Global. FTX’s Sam Bankman-Fried and LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman, too, were among its early investors. Worldcoin had last raised $115 million in a Series C round in May 2023.

Prior to this, in March 2022, it had raised $100 million at a valuation of $3 billion.

Currently, according to crypto news outlet The Block, Altman is looking to raise a new round of $50 million from investors.

The company is raising funds by selling the project’s crypto tokens at a discounted rate, the report said.