You can now visit the World Trade Center and have your eyes scanned by a polished orb designed by former Apple product designer and Jony Ive–hire Thomas Meyerhoffer, which will prove that you are not a robot and provide you with cryptocurrency. Meyerhoffer’s basketball-sized orb was designed for the Sam Altman and Alex Blania–led Worldcoin project, which has the “ambition of creating a new identity and financial network owned by everyone.” Nevermind the Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) desire to regulate crypto as a security—Altman has already rolled out the orb in 34 countries.
Altman, among other tech projects, is the CEO of Open AI, whose products include ChatGPT and DALL-E. The blockchain cryptocurrency project Worldcoin, whose tokens are currently not available in the U.S. due to regulatory concerns, are posited by the company as a decentralized “potential path to AI-funded UBI (universal basic income).” Each scanee receives a World ID, which provides a unique number that allows access to the platform.
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Altman told The Financial Times that the eye scanner was “a clear ick factor.” Maybe that’s why Altman sought out a designer like Meyerhoffer, whose past collaborations have produced designs with ISAORA, Coca-Cola, Michael Bloomberg’s 2016 presidential campaign, and the faltering smart lock startup Latch, which Meyerhoffer cofounded.
Worldcoin describes Meyerhoffer as having designed products that are “trusted by millions of people every day.” This anti bad actor ethos reinforces Worldcoin’s mission to shift crypto away from bots and make it more “authentic.” What better way to do so than with the tech-minimalist orb?
The spherical orb is tilted in a way that mirrors Earth’s tilt (and also angles it toward a user’s face) in a way that Worldcoin describes as “primal, uniform and eternal.” The sphere is necessary, the company markets, because its shape appears so often in nature, architecture, and art that it is universally understood “in a way that simply wouldn’t be possible with a standard box.” Box-market hawkers beware.
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The orb weighs 6.2 pounds (2.8 kilograms) so that it can be transported to different locations, fueling Worldcoin user growth. In a more classic tech product way, Worldcoin posits that the design offers users a simple, digestible design that hosts the complex technology behind its opaque shell. The orbs were originally silver-colored, but will now be manufactured with white-colored shells with an added “warm copper ring, soft lighting and a mirror to make the experience more personal and, quite literally, reflective of each individual person.” Worldcoin took a bit of inspiration from the Acne Studios basketball, so it seems.
As of publication, over 2 million people have signed up for Worldcoin. There are 346 active orbs, though 2,000 have already been manufactured. From Nairobi, Kenya to Hong Kong; Santiago, Chile to Rio Tinto, Portugal, users can have their eyes scanned by orbs (you can explore the orb’s reach through a poorly-functioning globe).
Worldcoin has major ambitions—which would make the orb the ubiquitous center of the global economy (or so the company hopes). As Meyerhoffer said: “The user is everybody.”
