DEBRIEF - Worldcoin

Ryan & David debriefing the Worldcoin episode. Want to listen to all past and future Debriefs for all Monday podcast episodes? Become a Bankless Citizen for access: https://www.bankless.com/join ----- 🎬 WATCH THE FULL EPISODE HERE: https://youtu.be/4HFyXYvMwFc ----- Not financial or tax advice. This channel is strictly educational and is not investment advice or a solicitation to buy or sell any assets or to make any financial decisions. This video is not tax advice. Talk to your accountant. Do your own research. Disclosure. From time-to-time I may add links in this newsletter to products I use. I may receive commission if you make a purchase through one of these links. Additionally, the Bankless writers hold crypto assets. See our investment disclosures here: https://www.bankless.com/disclosures

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Ryan Sean Adams?

  Hey guys, this is called a debrief episode. It's an episode that David and I record right after the podcast. This one was delayed by a few days. I think it took us a while to catch up after the episode with WorldCoin. But we wanted to release this on the public feed so everyone has access to it. And you can see our thoughts coming out of the conversation with WorldCoin. Usually this debrief is available only for Bankless citizens, available on the Bankless Premium RSS feed, but today we are releasing it publicly. So we hope you enjoy. This should give you some insight into the conversation we just had with WorldCoin. Thanks a lot. Hey guys, welcome to the debrief after the episode that I wasn't on with WorldCoin. Sam Altman-

• 0:42David Hoffman?

  The cool thing about debriefs is it doesn't matter.

• 0:43Ryan Sean Adams?

  Okay, who'd you have on? Tell me about it.

• 0:46David Hoffman?

  We had on Sam Altman and Alex Belania of WorldCoin. First time Sam Altman's been on the show. First time Alex has been on the show. And so yeah, it was, so you weren't there, so I have to tell you about what the episode was about.

• 1:01Ryan Sean Adams?

  You guys recorded on Mother's Day. I couldn't be there.

• 1:03David Hoffman?

  Oh, that's right. That's why you couldn't be there. It was also, it was also a Sunday. I don't think you would've, yeah.

• 1:08Ryan Sean Adams?

  I probably would've aped out anyway.

• 1:11David Hoffman?

  Yeah. So it was, it was just a straightforward, uh, download on WorldCoin. So for people who had never heard about WorldCoin before, this would be a great episode for them. Talked a little bit about like, the drama about WorldCoin's launch, which we actually had, uh, not like, uh, wasn't like how we had a play in the, we had like a quick story about the, the WorldCoin launch way back when, because they were gonna come on the show, uh, and then their PR company canceled because you sent out the tweet, "What the fuck is going on with WorldCoin?", and the PR company thought it was hella hostile.

• 1:45Ryan Sean Adams?

  Oh, they did?

• 1:46David Hoffman?

  So we're like, "We're out, we're out." Yeah, you don't remember this?

• 1:48Ryan Sean Adams?

  Did you guys bring that up?

• 1:49David Hoffman?

  Uh, not in the recording, but afterwards, yes. I brought it up with Alex. And Alex was like, "Oh yeah, we fired those people for like, a long ago. And like, they were terrible." And I'm like, "Thank you." It worked.

• 2:00Ryan Sean Adams?

  That's so stupid, man. I, like, okay, so that put a bad taste in my mouth when that happened. And that's not, the only two times that's happened, actually, besides like, maybe, um- I won't count Charles from Cardano, but Gavin Wood.

• 2:17David Hoffman?

  Right Gavin Wood.

• 2:19Ryan Sean Adams?

  Pokédot scheduled.

• 2:20David Hoffman?

  Yeah.

• 2:21Ryan Sean Adams?

  We're like, hey, and then could Gavin come on the podcast, having explored the Pokédot ecosystem? And then like, I think maybe a few days before.

• 2:33David Hoffman?

  Really close.

• 2:33Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, the the comms lead at Pokédot reached out and was like, hey, you know, we went back through some of your previous tweets like years ago. And like, we don't like what you, I mean, and Gavin's not going to come on the podcast. So we should cancel this and tried to substitute someone else at Pokédot in the podcast. And I think I asked for like what the offending offending tweets were, and they were so tame.

• 2:59David Hoffman?

  They were just weak.

• 3:00Ryan Sean Adams?

  It was just so tame, like, um, anyway, that that kind of puts a bad taste in my mouth when projects do that. But, uh, yeah, I guess they're they're saying.

• 3:09David Hoffman?

  So I'm giving I'm giving World, it was a PR firm. It was a PR company and I knew that it was, we knew that it was because like when the PR company like canceled on the show originally on us. That I went to Alex just straight on Twitter and it's like, hey, fuck your PR company like you need to, you're getting. World coin is getting the absolute shit slammed on them right now, like the backing away from like the public spotlight is this is not the right time to do that.

• 3:29Ryan Sean Adams?

  Everyone is asking the questions that we would ask you on a podcast.

• 3:34David Hoffman?

  Yeah.

• 3:34Ryan Sean Adams?

  It's so stupid.

• 3:35David Hoffman?

  And so I'd said, I basically said that to Alex and DM was like, you need to ignore your PR company because come on. Mainly, A, that was very valid and real and authentic advice. And B, I also did not want to emergency find another up another good guest. It takes some work. He just like, he didn't, he didn't go for it. Anyways, the cool trivia about that episode is the episode that came out of that was ultra scalable Ethereum, which turned out to be an absolute banger.

• 4:01Ryan Sean Adams?

  Oh, the one that we did last minute?

• 4:02David Hoffman?

  Yes, yeah.

• 4:03Ryan Sean Adams?

  We put together a brush agenda.

• 4:05David Hoffman?

  Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Anyway, so that was the precursor to this whole story. So finally, like, that was like, that had to have been over a year ago.

• 4:13Ryan Sean Adams?

  That's a long time ago.

• 4:14David Hoffman?

  Now World coin is still still around, still building, has won some hearts and minds to have joined the team and support the effort. Mainly people I respect, DC Builder, I don't know if you know that name floating around on crypto Twitter.

• 4:30Ryan Sean Adams?

  This is not DC investor.

• 4:31David Hoffman?

  Not DC investor, DC Builder.

• 4:34David Hoffman?

  Zero knowledge cryptography researcher guy that everyone generally trusts and appreciates in this space. He joined WorldCoin, a few other people joined WorldCoin. Optimism and WorldCoin are collaborating on OP mainnet OP stack stuff.

• 4:49Ryan Sean Adams?

  I think they still have a major uphill battle. So I am

• 4:53David Hoffman?

  About what?

• 4:54Ryan Sean Adams?

  Okay, so let me just say two things about this. One is I am very excited to listen to this episode, actually. And thankless listeners should know, I'm coming in the debrief, not having listened to the episode. So you guys are at an advantage to me. So we actually are recording this because schedules, David was in Zizalu and just schedules permitting, we're recording this, I think, like weeks later, really, this debrief. But I still haven't listened to the episode and I am excited to listen to it. And I intend to go into this episode with an open mind. I also don't think it will answer all of my questions. I think it'll be like

• 5:31David Hoffman?

  It's too high level.

• 5:32Ryan Sean Adams?

  It'll be a high level

• 5:33David Hoffman?

  We are at 60 minutes.

• 5:34Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, it'll open up the door for other questions. And I think one of my big questions is around sort of probably the privacy of this network, probably like, how decentralized really is it? Like, how public goodsy is it? How values aligned is it? I'm actually not sure what series of questions this will completely unlock. But I guess I don't want to hear a VC marketing machine tell me these things. I want to hear like independent community like representatives in that people I respect in privacy and decentralization

• 6:16Ryan Sean Adams?

  talk about these things. So, but I guess, so that's one part of it. The other part I would say, I think that they are just, it's just hard. I mean, I said this on the roll up last week, David, but like, the crypto bros want to orb you, right? And like

• 6:32David Hoffman?

  It's not great.

• 6:34Ryan Sean Adams?

  I mean, to what? To capture identity and who's behind it? It's the guy who's building the most powerful AI in the world, Sam Altman. And like, I don't know, that's an uphill marketing battle, I think. And like, maybe it should be. It's a very, if you're going to do something of this type of magnitude and make these types of vision commitments, then I think like you owe the world a commensurate level of transparency, auditability, openness, like, that's a pretty high bar to me.

• 7:19David Hoffman?

  And they say all of that stuff is on their roadmap, they say. And I'm a trusting individual, I tend to believe them. I think like there are some projects out there that are very, in the crypto world, that are very like beloved, like Gitcoin comes to mind, Protocol Guild, Optimism, I would say has some of this. Worldcoin has like the opposite of that. It's like, ooh, what is the opposite of beloved? I don't know, but it's like, it's easy to hate Worldcoin, just by the nature of what it is, which is like, if you trust Worldcoin and believe Worldcoin, then it's like totally unfair, because they're doing the same thing.

• 7:57Ryan Sean Adams?

  But you just said, so you just said, David, you're trusted, you're a trusting individual. Why are you a trusting individual? After all the shit we've gone through in crypto? Like, why? Why would you trust anybody in this space to do any, like?

• 8:13David Hoffman?

  I was a trusting individual before crypto, first off.

• 8:16Ryan Sean Adams?

  And so hasn't crypto like-

• 8:18David Hoffman?

  I'm just a trusting individual, my disposition is-

• 8:19Ryan Sean Adams?

  Jaded you? Hasn't crypto kind of like shown you to be less trusting in some cases? Particularly when you have sort of the setup of large VC allocation, a coin, super ambitious kind of promises, lots of ways to cut corners? Like, I'm not saying, Worldcoin could be fantastic, I have no idea. But I'm just saying, the pattern fits many patterns we've seen in the past of like-

• 8:50Ryan Sean Adams?

  This not working out very well. And I think that's what that's what the the white blood cells, the immune system of crypto is just kind of like indiscriminately attacking. And I think if you want to get more precise in the white blood cells, you really have to go dive deep. Most people don't have time to do that, including myself, honestly. It's like, I'm gonna be relying on third party privacy researchers, people in the crypto community I trust. I'm gonna do a little like, I'm gonna be able to do levels of due diligence, but I can't vet this thing from the ground up. Anyway, this distrust, like, why should we, why should we trust what they say at all? Like, why shouldn't we default posture to like, oh, this is a bunch of bullshit? And then, you know, work our way out of that?

• 9:34David Hoffman?

  So I will, I'm not going to make the case for why one should trust WorldCoin, but I will make the argument for, let's see, I'm not, okay, let me say that, start that again. I'm not saying that you should trust WorldCoin, but here is the argument for like, why it, why you could, why, why there are some green flags here that are different from like, all of the 2022, like, mess that we don't want to go back to. One is like, the idea, if you accept that the idea that biometric scanning is the most civil resistant mechanism to produce proof of humanity, then, then you get something like the orb. And so you can start to like, cast away the negative connotation that iris scanning and

• 10:17David Hoffman?

  the orb has, which is like a source of like distrust, is just like, the whole aesthetics of the whole thing. So you have, so you can like, try and shave that from your brain. Then there's like, okay, VC, like allocation, serializing humans, like all, all that kind of stuff. Well, like, Sam, like, do you trust Sam Altman? Like, maybe, maybe, what does Sam Altman have in it that like, three hours capital or Do Kwon or SPF? He just doesn't fit those types. And neither does Alex Blahnia, right? Like, maybe if Alex Blahnia was loud on Twitter and, and

• 10:53Ryan Sean Adams?

  They're not populous?

• 10:55David Hoffman?

  Yeah, populist, right. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So there's not that, right? There's not, it doesn't seem like a get rich quick scheme. They actually have a roadmap to produce something uniquely valuable and unique in and of itself to crypto. I don't think it maps on to like the whole like things that we should.

• 11:16Ryan Sean Adams?

  Map on to like a VC coin, VC alternative layer one that we've seen so many times. I know it's not actually an alternative layer one. So that alone makes it kind of different, but you know, we've seen many just ridiculously funded alternative layer ones that kind of like go liquid and then you just sort of get this feeling and kind of see in the data that the VCs just dump on you. Once it, once it gets into the market and they don't really go anywhere. They don't have product market fit. It just feels like corporate top down. It doesn't feel organic. There's no builders. There's no community. And so I guess the, where that usually turns into is not an outright scam, but just like, I don't know.

• 12:00Ryan Sean Adams?

  Exit, you become exit liquidity in some cases for VCs and then it becomes sort of a zombie chain, which is not like the worst outcome. That's not like a SBF FTX style outcome or a lunaterra outcome, but it's still not a, it's not a great outcome.

• 12:17David Hoffman?

  So like it's, it is heavily VC weighted. There's, there's two things that, there's two ways to approach like VC weighting. There are like the easy like, yo, let's fork Ethereum, fork the EVM, which the Ethereum researchers have been building for like almost a decade now, more than a decade now. And then like, let's raise on it and then like, keep all the tokens for ourselves and dump on the followers. So like, get other people to do the lift work, pump the token ourselves with our VC marketing dollars and then dump. So like, not much work, a lot of upside. So the World Coin Project is a ton of work. Is a ton of work.

• 12:50Ryan Sean Adams?

  You're saying it's not like a fork, it's not like a me too of something else?

• 12:54David Hoffman?

  Right, like the VC raise, the amount, the VC dollars are legitimate because there's no way that they could get the orb mass produced in a way that other people can produce the orb and they, there's no way that they could get people to scan other eyeballs like that aren't in the world coin and like, um, aren't world coin employees. Like that whole lift side of things requires VC dollars. It's very legitimate use of a capital raise. And then like the whole, like, so, so that, that just checks out to me. Like you need VC money for that.

• 13:26Ryan Sean Adams?

  So it still doesn't fit the mold of a, a typical VC exit scam kind of thing. And I, I put scam in quotations because it's usually just ghost chain, low product market fit where you become exit liquidity. If you, if you buy this particular token, but you don't have to buy this particular token.

• 13:40David Hoffman?

  And also it's not even the, the point of world coin isn't even the token. Like that's one of three points.

• 13:44Ryan Sean Adams?

  What are the three points?

• 13:46David Hoffman?

  Uh, hu- proof of humanhood, the, the coin and a missing one. Maybe, maybe it's just two. I feel like there's, there's world ID, there's the world app, which I think is pretty similar to world ID. It's like, yeah, it's the wallet, your authentication, but I guess that's pretty similar to world ID.

• 14:03Ryan Sean Adams?

  This is built on a layer two, right?

• 14:06David Hoffman?

  So right now they're deploying on OP mainnet and eventually they will make OP stack chain.

• 14:11Ryan Sean Adams?

  And so this will be their own sort of, will it be like a layer three type chain or?

• 14:16David Hoffman?

  It'll be an independent OP stack chain.

• 14:18Ryan Sean Adams?

  Independent OP stack chain.

• 14:20David Hoffman?

  Which in theory like fits into the optimism super chain model.

• 14:23Ryan Sean Adams?

  I mean, that's kind of cool, right? I, I guess, um.

• 14:27David Hoffman?

  So like as an OP stack chain, the app that, so it's like an app specific chain. And what does that app specific chain do? It provides proof of humanhood, the world coin way.

• 14:38Ryan Sean Adams?

  Okay.

• 14:38David Hoffman?

  To the OP super chain. And which is eventually just Ethereum.

• 14:42Ryan Sean Adams?

  And by the way, the reason I'm coming in a little hotter in this is because I think this is how the white blood cells are attacking. These are the questions. I guess maybe the last, we don't have necessarily full satisfactory answers on what you just raised already, but I think you are offering some valid points of how this kind of breaks the pattern, typical pattern we've seen. That's all I'm doing right now. And I think that's what the crypto community is doing, pattern recognition. But there's this third kind of negative pattern that I think people see, and that is the figure of Sam Altman, which is like, all right, tech bro. I put him in quotations billionaire. I don't even know if he's a billionaire. I heard him go in front of.

• 15:22David Hoffman?

  He's definitely billionaire.

• 15:22Ryan Sean Adams?

  Okay, so, but he went in front.

• 15:24David Hoffman?

  He quacks like one.

• 15:26Ryan Sean Adams?

  In Congress, I mean, he has no equity in OpenAI? Like, I just don't even know how this works.

• 15:31David Hoffman?

  Yeah. He has no equity in OpenAI. I think that you can't necessarily take that at face value because like he could have no equity in OpenAI and then OpenAI could get liquidity and then he could get like a billion dollar grant from OpenAI. So there's like roundabout ways where that doesn't really matter.

• 15:47Ryan Sean Adams?

  He feels like the Mark Zuckerberg of the 2020s in that he has created this technology that is clearly going to change everything about the fabric of the way humans organize and interact in OpenAI, right? And so he is sort of this, and now we're at a phase, I think, in the world where like tech bros from Silicon Valley are like all kind of grouped into this parasitic extractor type of motif. And some people might think that's fair. Some people might think that's unfair. I think the majority of society though, just doesn't trust that sort of individual at

• 16:32Ryan Sean Adams?

  this point in time. And so. I guess a question to you is like, or maybe just a question to mull over is like, is this guy legit? Or is this guy going to be like somewhat evil or somewhat influenced by Moloch traps? And all of the things that we've seen tech billionaires get influenced by, leading to like bad outcomes for society? I guess the question is, can you really trust Sam Altman is what it comes down to?

• 17:04David Hoffman?

  So yeah, the archetype of like the web two extractor, the zuck, zuck web two idea. Like I'm reminded of the, this quote from Sam Harris, where he was talking about how everyone is like, they're no fewer people in the like, there's a modern movement to ignore expertise, just like, oh, experts are wrong. They're all, they're all wrong. Like experts like told you to wear masks and they're wrong. And so he was throwing a flag at that whole like movement that's going on in the

• 17:34Ryan Sean Adams?

  Like an anti-intellectualism sort of

• 17:36David Hoffman?

  Yeah, exactly. And he's like, the way that society progresses is like, there are experts and then they say things and then we prove those experts wrong. That's how society moves forward. But who actually proves experts wrong? Other experts, like more experts, not the masses. And so like in the, to carry over this analogy, Zuckerberg is the old expert. Sam Altman, who knows if he's a better, newer expert who proves the old archetype wrong. But as me as a trusting individual, I would like to leave that door open, that the way through that, that bad branding for tech bro, VC tech bro, founder, innovator type is actually, we find one that like does good for the world, like who fixes the problems. Like it's not going to be like the average Joe that solves proof of humanity, proof

• 18:21David Hoffman?

  of humanhood in the AI world. It's going to be a VC tech pro. That's why he's a VC tech pro is that's how you solve these problems.

• 18:30Ryan Sean Adams?

  And what was your impression of him during the conversation?

• 18:33David Hoffman?

  I'm slowly liking him more and more and more.

• 18:35Ryan Sean Adams?

  Why? What do you like about him?

• 18:40David Hoffman?

  He seems authentic. He seems nice.

• 18:45David Hoffman?

  He's not running away from the alignment problem.

• 18:52Ryan Sean Adams?

  I mean, I think some-

• 18:53David Hoffman?

  If he is good in the front and then bad in the back, he is a world-class sociopath.

• 18:59Ryan Sean Adams?

  What does the AI safety community think about this guy? I mean, I know Eliezer Yudkaski-

• 19:05David Hoffman?

  I don't know.

• 19:06Ryan Sean Adams?

  Eliezer Yudkaski is like, burn down all the GPUs.

• 19:09David Hoffman?

  Yeah, but he's an extremist.

• 19:11Ryan Sean Adams?

  Okay, but I'm surprised that AI safety... I haven't really seen AI safety and alignment groups come out and torch OpenAI. Or Sam Altman, very publicly.

• 19:24David Hoffman?

  Well, anyone, right? They haven't torched anyone.

• 19:27Ryan Sean Adams?

  Is that sort of happening? Is there the general impression in AI alignment communities that, hey, well, OpenAI is not perfect.

• 19:38Ryan Sean Adams?

  They've done a fairly good job so far. And they're not completely ignoring safety. They're still trying to remain competitive.

• 19:48David Hoffman?

  I think that's right. So OpenAI has an alignment division inside of them. And apparently contribute to this world.

• 19:59Ryan Sean Adams?

  Well, there's another factor of why people are scared. And that's just because these tech billionaires are so powerful these days. It's like, how powerful is Mark Zuckerberg at this point? How powerful is the individual who is masterminding OpenAI? Right? And now you're doing decentralized identity as well? You're doing WorldCoin as well? I think that unnerves people. One thing I'd say, though, because this has been somewhat, you know, me throwing lobbing grenades and criticisms. What is the alternative to decentralized identity? Like, that is the threshold to cross. It's like, basically, what we're going to be left with is some sort of nation-state digital identity, right?

• 20:44Ryan Sean Adams?

  I mean, that's all we have. I mean, India already has that deployed now. And that is completely centralized. Now, you might argue, well, that's, you know, this is the, probably the Rowan Gray argument that, well, yeah, of course, decentralized identity, it's great, it's a, you know, democratic nation state sort of proposing this and putting this forward. And so that's a great thing, but that is definitely centralized technology. And I do think that is the only viable alternative that we've seen. For all of the decentralized identity experiments in crypto, so far, none of them have really taken off. So as long as this thing is better than that, or different enough than that, it feels like a worthwhile experiment to

• 21:27Ryan Sean Adams?

  keep running. Like, what's the downside, I guess, would be my question.

• 21:32David Hoffman?

  That's where I go back to like, the claim that biometric scanning is the best form of civil resistance. If that, I don't know, there's probably some measure of truth or falsity to that. But still, it's biometric, there's a reason why we do biometric scanning. So turning biometric scanning into proof of humanhood, I think is a noble endeavor. And so that is why I am categorizing myself as a world coin apologist.

• 21:59Ryan Sean Adams?

  Wait, you'd say a world coin apologist?

• 22:01David Hoffman?

  Yeah.

• 22:02Ryan Sean Adams?

  So that, like, apologist means like, you're fighting for world coin, like, you are evangelizing for world coin, you are sort of making the argument.

• 22:11David Hoffman?

  I'm just saying that, like, the, well, the existence of world coin is not the thing to be upset about.

• 22:18Ryan Sean Adams?

  I guess my take is, and this might be a more moderate take, I'm just open minded. I think that sometimes the crypto white blood cells attack too hard, and destroy things without, like, without good reason. And so I am pretty open minded about this one, and excited to see how it plays out. When are you gonna get orb'd, David?

• 22:41David Hoffman?

  Oh, I'm not getting orb'd.

• 22:44Ryan Sean Adams?

  If you're an apologist, though, you have to get orbed at some point.

• 22:48David Hoffman?

  I will get orbed when I need to do something that requires me getting orbed.

• 22:52Ryan Sean Adams?

  What's the benefit of getting orbed, anyway? Is it just you get actual world coins?

• 22:56David Hoffman?

  Yeah, you get world coins sooner. You get a distribution of world coins.

• 22:59Ryan Sean Adams?

  And that the idea is that world coins, like any crypto token, appreciate in value over time?

• 23:03David Hoffman?

  And so, yes, Sam Altman actually talked about that on the podcast explicitly, like, yeah, well, I'd never go up. Like, so like, the interesting thing about world coin is that, like, not only is it's a currency that might be used, but it might also be like a graph for like things like airdrops or distributions. So if world coin as a distribution mechanism becomes legitimately decentralized and distributed to humans equally all over the planet, then it becomes a very good, like, graph to distribute other things to. Remember, you read Bill Bowder's book, Red Notice?

• 23:38Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah.

• 23:40David Hoffman?

  Yeah, so like, there was a big problem when Soviet Russia went from communist to capitalist. Like, how did they distribute the equity of the companies to the people of Russia? And so they gave out like these vouchers things and to people, like, if there was world coin, they would have just been airdropped. Here's the equity of the company to the citizens of Russia, right? It's just like a legitimate mapping of equity and capital. As far, it's like the most legitimately distributed asset of all time is the thesis that they're going after.

• 24:12Ryan Sean Adams?

  Why world coin? Why are they calling this thing world coin?

• 24:14David Hoffman?

  I don't know. I don't. I don't.

• 24:18Ryan Sean Adams?

  All right. Well, open-minded. And then when's this thing launching? Did you find that out?

• 24:24David Hoffman?

  They do not have a public date yet.

• 24:26Ryan Sean Adams?

  Okay. Well, I do know that our-

• 24:28David Hoffman?

  It's like rolls out. It's not like one thing that launches. It rolls out over time.

• 24:31Ryan Sean Adams?

  Do you know our editor, Luke of Bankless Newsletter, he got orbed, actually, on Thursday, New York City?

• 24:40David Hoffman?

  Luma?

• 24:41Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, Luma got orb.

• 24:42David Hoffman?

  Luma got orbs?

• 24:42Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, he went to offices and got orb'd as a test.

• 24:46David Hoffman?

  No shit?

• 24:47Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, so I haven't debriefed with him.

• 24:50David Hoffman?

  Is it gonna be like the, what's that Dr. Seuss book? Starbelly Sneetches or whatever?

• 24:54Ryan Sean Adams?

  Orbs, if you're orb'd or if you're not?

• 24:56David Hoffman?

  Yeah, if you've been orb'd or not, yeah.

• 24:58Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, um, I just, I feel like they could have done something different in the marketing, but maybe there's no other way. I, world coin orbs.

• 25:06David Hoffman?

  That's what I was thinking about, like, okay, so if you, once you commit to the biometric scanning thesis, like, then you, then you conclude, this is like outside of, of just crypto stuff, then you conclude that irises are the most legitimate, um, like biometric scanning technology. So you are scanning irises. If you believe in biometric scanning, you believe in scanning irises.

• 25:25Ryan Sean Adams?

  So you're saying there's no way to make that?

• 25:27David Hoffman?

  How do you, how do you make a thing that is mass producible so that we can capture eight billion irises? Like, what shape do you put that in? Do you want it to be a box? Cause the box isn't much better. Like, do you wanna like dress it up like a teddy bear? Cause that's kinda worse. Like, how do you do it? How do you do it in a way that doesn't make people squirm? It's not possible.

• 25:51Ryan Sean Adams?

  Maybe, could you do, yeah, it's probably not possible if you have to have an independent hardware device. You can't like create an app for it or something like this.

• 25:59David Hoffman?

  Right.

• 26:00Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, well, you know what?

• 26:01David Hoffman?

  Once you make it, once you make its own device, you have to, it has to be custom. It can't look like anything else. Like, what, how do you do it?

• 26:10Ryan Sean Adams?

  I, I still think that-

• 26:11David Hoffman?

  A Chrome orb is like as good as idea, idea as any.

• 26:14Ryan Sean Adams?

  I still think that even though this is very well funded, given the names and given the kind of the ambition as well, it kind of should be. Um, I still think that the most likely scenario of a product like this is it doesn't reach a product market fit, right? And I just say that because that's generally what happens with startups. This is startup phase. And so maybe, um, I, I think a few things to watch is like, how's traction going? Um, is it able to resist civil attacks or not? That's a huge one.

• 26:46David Hoffman?

  Big question.

• 26:48Ryan Sean Adams?

  What's, you know, I guess, how many new IDs are they getting over time? Um, it's stuff like that, I think that will really-

• 26:56David Hoffman?

  I mean, the big question is like-

• 26:57Ryan Sean Adams?

  Make a break.

• 26:59David Hoffman?

  Because like Sam Altman is doing this because the world of AI is coming. And so I think without the world of AI.

• 27:05Ryan Sean Adams?

  Wait, why? What's the tie? Because you need to prove who the humans are?

• 27:09David Hoffman?

  On the internet, yeah. And so like WorldCoin without AI, I don't think is has much legs. Like I think Sam Altman is going to simultaneously produce the need for WorldCoin using OpenAI. And that has actually been his plan all along. He's like, first I'm even going to make OpenAI. And then there's going to be AIs everywhere. Oh, then we're going to need to figure out who the humans are. So I'm also going to make this WorldCoin thing.

• 27:33Ryan Sean Adams?

  I create the problem and also the solution. I mean, you can see how this gets very.

• 27:39David Hoffman?

  A good business model.

• 27:40Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah. Anyway, to be determined, we'll see. I would definitely be great to have Sam on the podcast again and talk about AI stuff as well. But I'm sure we'll get into that some future stage.

• 27:51David Hoffman?

  He's going to owe the world a handful of conversations.

• 27:55Ryan Sean Adams?

  Well, Bankless Nation, let us know what you think of WorldCoin and this conversation. As always, we appreciate you being Bankless Citizen. Thanks a lot.