October 25, 2021

130,000 people have signed up for a project to have their eyes scanned in exchange for a free cryptocurrency.

Known as Worldcoin and built on Ethereum’s blockchain and set to debut early next year, the project’s developers distributed about 30 iris-scanning hardware devices known as “orbs” to early users.

The scanning hardware takes photos of a user’s eyeballs and creates a unique code that can be used to claim free digital tokens.

While the team behind Worldcoin has raised $25 million in venture capital, it plans to spend a total of 10 billion tokens, 80 percent of which will go to users, 10 percent to the company’s investors, and another 10 percent to the foundation responsible for making the orbs and developing the network.

Alex Blania, who clarified whether the orbs used would invade users privacy, denied those reports , stating that the orb converts iris scans into unique letters and numbers before permanently erasing the images. Additionally, they further noted that the code obtained is only used to verify whether a user has already claimed a share of the Worldcoin tokens.

For more information, read the original story in Arstechnica.