Monthly Archives: October 2024

While the biometric-scanning Orb and the World network have their roots in crypto tokens, “crypto” wasn’t an oft-mentioned word during the event. Instead, Altman and Blania emphasized World’s blockchain service, digital asset management, and virtual communication tools.

Blania claimed during the press briefing that, in the future, World hopes to build the “largest finance network” on the planet.

In a separate interview with WIRED, Blania said that during regular Sunday meetings at Atlman’s house, the pair were inspired by the rise of PayPal. Similar to the way that Peter Thiel, Max Levchin, and others once pioneered digital payments and fundamentally changed online commerce—becoming billionaires themselves in the process—the World team saw themselves building out a similar network for tokens on a distributed network.

The World app, for now, is free for everyone to use. It’s free to scan your eyeballs, too. Tools for Humanity itself is venture-backed, and the foundation, in its land grab for the modern identity verification market and your personal biometric data, is focused on scale, scale, scale. Eventually, it may make money through processing fees, Blania said.

Most of Tools for Humanity’s expansion plans for now are in locations outside of the US, due to murky regulations around crypto stateside, the organization’s spokesperson told me.

If you use the Orb and compatible app in the US, it will scan and store your iris but won’t generate a crypto token for you.

Two and a half years ago, the Worldcoin project came under scrutiny for allegedly deceptive and exploitative practices in recruiting individuals to scan their irises. At the time, Blania attributed this haphazard behavior to the organization still being in its “startup” phase. In an interview with WIRED, Blania said the company is doing “like, a thousand things” to ensure a more rigorous consent process. This includes staffing an “operational team” in every market where World will be. He said there will be “explanations” in the World app for how the product works.

“And again, there is no data stored in any central place or anything,” Blania said.

In 2023, the service was also being investigated by governments in Germany, Brazil, India, South Korea, and Kenya over concerns about how it was storing and using biometric data. Kenya suspended Worldcoin enrollment entirely. South Korea fined the company. Worldcoin suspended its own service in India, Brazil, and France.

Blania said he believes World will relaunch in Kenya “sometime soon.”

When asked in the press briefing about the emphasis on Latin America as a market for expansion, such as through the partnership with Rappi for orbs-on-delivery, Blania disputed the idea that World was prioritizing Latin America over other locations.

“It’s just that we have limited resources, and there’s a natural sequencing happening,” Blania said. “We are similarly focused on Asia and other places. Argentina has been a fast-growing market for us, for example, and we’re excited about that.”

“But the project is literally called World,” he added.

After the keynote, Altman ran into the press room to wave and apologize for not being able to stay, then slipped away like a head of state.

Late in his team’s game against the Green Bay Packers on September 15, Indianapolis Colts tight end Kylen Granson caught a short pass over the middle of the field, charged forward, and lowered his body to brace for contact. The side of his helmet smacked the face mask of linebacker Quay Walker, and the back of it whacked the ground as Walker wrestled him down. Rising to his feet after the 9-yard gain, Granson tossed the football to an official and returned to the line of scrimmage for the next snap.

Aside from it being his first reception of the 2024 National Football League season, this otherwise ordinary play was only noteworthy because of what Granson was wearing at the time of the hit: a 12-ounce, foam-padded, protective helmet covering called a Guardian Cap.

Already mandatory for most positions at all NFL preseason practices, as well as regular-season and postseason practices with contact, these soft shells received another vote of confidence this year when the league greenlit them for optional game use, citing a roughly 50 percent drop in training camp concussions since their official 2022 debut. Through six weeks of action this fall, only 10 NFL players had actually taken the field with one on, according to a league spokesperson. But the decision was easy for Granson, who tried out his gameday Guardian Cap—itself covered by a 1-ounce pinnie with the Colts logo to simulate the design of the helmet underneath—in preseason games before committing to wear it for real.

“I was pleasantly surprised that it didn’t affect anything for me,” the 26-year-old told WIRED a few days before facing the Packers in week two. “I thought, even if it looks kind of silly, it’s worth it.”

There is no ignoring the goofy aesthetics of the puffy, blobby Guardian Caps. The product’s parent company, Guardian Sports, even has staff T-shirts that declare, LOOK GOOD, FEEL GOOD, PLAY GOOD—with LOOK GOOD crossed out. “Condom caps, mushroom heads—we’ve heard them all,” says Erin Hanson, cofounder of Guardian Sports alongside her husband, Lee Hanson. “We just laugh, because we agree.”

It can be tough to square the reality that the apparent future of football headgear resembles something out of a ’60s-era sci-fi movie. But the fact that Guardian Caps are now allowed at all in games in the NFL—a league known for policing every inch of player equipment to protect its image—doesn’t just speak to their lab-tested utility (even if published, peer-reviewed on-field data remains lacking). It also reflects the urgency of the moment for football at large.

The dangers of strapping on a helmet have never been clearer, given the link between repeated blows to the head—whether concussion-causing or not—and chronic traumatic encephalopathy (otherwise known as CTE, a brain disorder associated with cognitive issues like depression and progressive dementia that can only be diagnosed posthumously). Not coincidentally, the race to find answers has become faster and more lucrative than ever, between the NFL’s funding of private research efforts and a rapidly innovating football headgear industry.

And at the center of it all, on the sport’s biggest stage, is a literal mom-and-pop shop that, less than a decade and a half ago, was struggling to find a foothold in football as anything but a joke.