Argentina is already the country with the most eye scans in the world, with one in three registered

The number is shocking: one in every three irises that Worldcoin scanned since its inception came from Argentina. There are more than 2 million, of the six that the controversial project has that seeks to be able to accurately distinguish whether a user is a human or not by taking the eye biometric data.

Who stated it Alex Blania, CEO of the company, in a presentation held this Thursday in San Francisco, in which he participated Clarion. It was in the middle of a global announcement from the firm, which aims to scale the people verification project to a massive level. Worldcoin, which became known worldwide for provide gift cryptocurrencies in exchange for scanning, it now wants to multiply that reach.

As Blania and Sam Altman, another of the co-founders, announced on stage, they want to scan “to every person” on a global level.

It was at a conference where they also announced some of the most ambitious projects that the platform will have in the future. From a government-level integration to add official documents (such as a driver’s license or ID) to your WorldApp app, to increasing cryptocurrency exchange in the virtual wallet they integrated.

In that presentation, Argentina had its highlights. According to Worldcoin data, a total of 2,262,283 people had their iris verified in Argentina at the time of presentation. At a global level they did 6.275.477.

It is an explosion that occurred in the last year. According to the latest data provided by the company to ClarionIn April of this year, they had about 500,000 verified people in the country, which represented about 10% of the 5 million worldwide.

There are currently 51 verification points throughout the country, but they aim to multiply the reach. It is for this reason that they announced several integrations, such as adding orbs (the hyper-specialized camera with which verifications are carried out) in commercial premises such as cafes, shopping malls or office supply bookstores.

They want them to be self-service terminals where the verification process can be done easily. They currently installed a new space in the Abasto shopping center and they advanced They announced an agreement with Rappi, so that each delivery can carry an orb and carry out verifications when delivering an order.

But to reach a mass level, one of the announcements that generated the most stir was the decision to put orbs on sale, so that users can verify the people within their environments on their own.

“It is a path of decentralization. In the same way that today you buy a video card and start mining bitcoin without asking for permission, which is a very basic principle of doing this, you will be able to organize an order and do last mile verifications in your community,” said Martín Mazza, regional manager of Tools for Humanity for Latin America, the head company that encompasses the Worldcoin project.

Mazza, who is also Argentine, ruled out that the strong adoption of the Worldcoin project at the country level is linked to the recent years of economic turbulence that Argentina went through and the delivery of the Worldcoin token (WLD), which is equivalent to about $50. .

“(We launched the application in beta phase in August 2022 and the currency was officially launched in July 2023. And we already had a lot of adoption. We saw in different shopping centers and places that people were verifying themselves. We said that this is a technology new, which serves to validate humans (and differentiate) from bots. You also receive this participation, which at that time was 25 tokens that had no value,” he says.

According to him, today 90 percent of registered users return to use the app every month.

In the midst of the presentation of new projects for the coming years, the CEO of the Worldcoin firm, Alex Blania, admitted that he is engaging in various conversations at an official level with Argentina, and declared himself “a big fan” of Javier Milei’s government. .

It was at a hand-to-hand press conference after the announcement. In response to the query of Clarion Regarding official agreements between the Worldcoin project and Casa Rosada, Blania avoided giving details but gave praise.

“We have conversations with the Argentine government about a lot of things, and in general I’m a big fan of the government. It’s always great to talk to the people there. There is nothing specific that we can release now, but soon yes,” Blania responded.

The one who also referred to Argentina was Sam Altman, the other founding partner. As he confirmed to journalist Sebastián Davidovsky in a conversation during the event, he intends to come to Argentina in December of this year.

Altman had already been in Argentina in January of this year for work meetings, as confirmed by Worldcoin sources. It was a meeting that was not officially disclosed, and where he did not cross paths with Milei. The OpenAI representative did hold meetings with the president in the United States, during one of the libertarian’s trips to meet in San Francisco with leaders from the tech sector.

Regarding the closure, Worldcoin announced the intention to rebrandear the brand under the same umbrella called World Network from now on. World’s main objective is to become the tool that allows certifying in a digital environment whether the person on the other side answering is a human, a chatbot or an Artificial Intelligence.

The sign that asks the user to verify that they are not a robot is already old: today AIs solve captcha better than humans themselves. Its objective is to create “proofs of humanity”, that is, a certificate that indicates that a user is a real person.