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Resolved this as soon as I woke up on September 1st. Not sure what the general etiquette is in regards to timezones? I'm in Australia so September 1st for me is a bit earlier than for most.

In this case it was clear the question would resolve as no regardless but had the numbers been much closer I'm not sure what would've been the best course of action. Any feedback is appreciated.

Resolves no

but what if they scan 750k irises today?? 🙃

@jcb It's already september in a lot of places

but it's still august in others!

<1 %

biometrics are a terrible authentication method for crypto

@JonathanRay That's an interesting opinion, but it doesn't have anything to do with this market really...

@JonathanRay That was my first thought, but it turns out Worldcoin doesn’t use biometrics for crypto auth. They use a biometric hash to establish unique personhood, then discard the underlying biometric data. Matthew Green’s analysis: https://blog.cryptographyengineering.com/2023/08/21/some-rough-impressions-of-worldcoin/

Some rough impressions of Worldcoin

Recently a reader wrote in and asked if I would look at Sam Altman's Worldcoin, presumably to give thoughts on it from a privacy perspective. This was honestly the last thing I wanted to do, since life is short and this seemed like an obvious waste of it. Of course a project devoted to literally…

I don't see this recommended as related so I'll drop this here:
https://manifold.markets/parhizj/will-worldcoin-report-a-billion-use

Will Worldcoin report a billion user signups before 2026

18% chance. Through a press release or NYT / WAPO / WSJ, if Worldcoin reports having signed up a billion users before Jan. 1, 2026, this will resolve Yes then. Otherwise, this will resolve No on Jan. 1, 2026. If there is any dispute or doubt about the company claim being true, this will still resolv…

Pause for verifications in one target country (Kenya), unknown how long that will be. 53 million people they will have trouble eyeballing. https://www.theverge.com/2023/8/2/23817147/kenya-worldcoin-suspended-sam-altman-eyeball-scanning

Kenya suspends Sam Altman’s eyeball-scanning crypto project

Kenya has some reservations about Worldcoin.

Woah this question got nearly 30 new traders overnight. Was it shared somewhere?

@Alfie Dunno, I just think it's one of those controversial questions where people buy in heavily on both sides. A bunch of going up and down triggers Manifold's "trending" algorithm.

I'm firmly on the NO side, as I think the launch went rather poorly and we'll see the temporary spike of interest drop off. Still only ~300 orbs in circulation. That's the key number to keep track of.

@VitorBosshard In fact, I think that's a really interesting question, so I made a market:

https://manifold.markets/VitorBosshard/will-worldcoin-have-1000-active-orb?r=Vml0b3JCb3NzaGFyZA

Will Worldcoin have > 1000 active orbs by end of 2023?

50% chance. Worldcoin reports stats about the number of orbs in circulation. As of market creation, this is 2000 manufactured, 366 “active in the last 30 days”. This question is about the latter number. Resolves N/A if they stop publishing this stat. Data source: https://worldcoin.org/ [link pr…

2,168,500 now

Using @GN19's number of 2168500 from 11 days ago...

Right now it is 2229370.

2229370 - 2168500 = 60,780 in ~11 days.

The current claimed 2 million users were obtained before May, so the growth rate isn't that significant. 3 million by end of year, maybe.

And still about 1 per second

@GN19 You really think people would do that? Just go on the internet and tell lies?

@JubileeYoung It pings the backend regularly at least, doesn't just increase number randomly on frontend

2.166.000

I think yes is undervalued. The website counter shows a 1 user/second increase. They currently show 2,122,000 users— extrapolating to the end of august implies they will have 4,800,400 users. In order to miss the target of 3 million users they need a slowdown to 0.3 users/second or slower for the entire month. While it’s possible they are exaggerating growth, given the backing of influential figures such as Sam Altman it seems unlikely.

(Disclaimer: I don’t like the idea of worldcoin)

@whalelang the ticking website counter is almost certainly a gimmick, not an actual reflection of signups: if you leave the page open, the rate decreases over time, and the browser console doesn't show any network requests fetching updated user counts (or a websocket that could be used for this). I haven't dug in to see exactly what's happening but I suspect the page just has one number, updated periodically, that controls the value where the rate starts to decrease.

Based on my squinting at the more significant digits in the number over the course of days, I think this market is too high. I guess I'll go ahead and put a bit more mana where my mouth is!

@jcb I also haven't seen a network activity at first, but then left the page open for some time and it does send the requests

@rpominov Interface is just so bloated it feels like they're mining bitcoin in javascript off me.