Worldcoin vs Proof of Humanity: Biometric vs Social Verification

Biometric Uniqueness: Uses the Orb device for iris-scanning to cryptographically prove human uniqueness. This enables global, permissionless verification at scale, with over 5 million verified users. This matters for protocols needing massive, automated user onboarding like global UBI experiments or large-scale airdrops.

SDK-First Approach: Offers the World ID SDK and on-chain Worldcoin smart contracts for easy integration into dApps. This matters for teams building permissionless applications that require a simple, standardized proof-of-personhood primitive without managing a registry.

Social Verification & Vouching: Relies on a web-of-trust model where existing members vouch for and can challenge new registrants via Kleros' decentralized court. This matters for communities prioritizing censorship resistance, decentralization, and social consensus over pure automation.

High-Cost Attack Surface: Creating a fake identity requires collusion and surviving a crowdsourced challenge period, making Sybil attacks economically and socially expensive. This matters for high-value governance systems (like DAOs) and reputation-based protocols where identity integrity is paramount.

Global, Scalable Uniqueness: Biometric verification via the Orb provides a cryptographically secure, globally unique proof-of-personhood. This enables massive-scale airdrops and global UBI experiments without manual review bottlenecks.

Hardware Dependency & Centralization: Relies on proprietary Orb hardware and a centralized issuing entity (Tools for Humanity). This creates supply chain bottlenecks and trust assumptions that conflict with decentralized ethos. Privacy concerns around iris code storage persist.

Decentralized & Trust-Minimized: Uses a social verification and video submission process adjudicated by a decentralized court (Kleros). No single entity controls the registry, aligning with Ethereum's credibly neutral principles.

Manual Process & Low Throughput: The video submission and challenge period creates a slow, manual onboarding flow (<1000 registrations/day). Vulnerable to coordinated Sybil attacks via cheap labor markets, requiring constant vigilance from the community.

Biometric hardware verification: Uses the Orb to scan iris patterns, aiming for global, unique human identification. This enables massive, permissionless distribution of tokens (e.g., WLD airdrops) with high throughput. Ideal for protocols needing to onboard millions of users quickly with a cryptographically strong, hardware-backed proof.

Hardware dependency and data control: Relies on a proprietary, centralized hardware device (the Orb) manufactured and deployed by a single entity. Stores biometric hashes, raising significant privacy and data sovereignty concerns. This creates a single point of failure and trust, problematic for decentralized purists and in regulated jurisdictions.

Social verification and dispute resolution: Uses video submission and a decentralized court system (Kleros) to verify unique humans. No central authority controls the registry. This aligns with Ethereum's ethos, making it a preferred choice for DAO governance (e.g., Gitcoin Grants) and applications where censorship resistance is paramount.

Manual, slow verification process: Each submission requires a video, a deposit, and a waiting period for potential challenges via Kleros jurors. This results in low throughput and high friction for users, making it unsuitable for mass-scale airdrops or applications requiring instant, gamified onboarding. Scalability is a key limitation.