โIt was this idea of creating a new primitive for the internet that can enable any appย to easily and quickly distinguish betwixt machines and humans, or bots and humans,โ Blockchainย Tech Financialย resources General Partner Spencer Bogart informed Decrypt in an interview. โThat was something that took me working more closely with our engineering team to really appreciate how big of a challenge that already is.โ
Bots have been a thorn in the side of blockchainย tech and digitalย currency projects for a long time.
โ[CAPTCHA] has been fairly effective for distinguishing betwixt bots and humans,โ Bogart stated. โThatโs no longer the case with more advanced automated systems, especially things being powered by AI.โ
Other corporations looking to fight the use of bots to scam and cheat include Civic, which launched a suite of tools last summer to stop bots from taking unfair advantage of Non-Fungibleย Tokenย (NFT) falls by limiting the number of wallets an account can use.
Nevertheless Bogart did not say how much Blockchainย Tech Financialย resources invested in the round, other investors joining the raise included a16z cryptocurrency, Bain Financialย resources Cryptocurrency, and Distributed Worldwide. Alongย with bot detection, Tools for Humanity reveals the funds will go towards research and development and expanding the Worldcoin project and World App.
San Francisco, Calif.-based Tools for Humanity boasts a growing team that includes previous employees of the Electric Coin Company, Revolut, Uber, Block, Twitter, and Apple.
The notice of the raise comes a week after a report by the Financial Times stated Worldcoin co- founder and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman was in โadvanced talksโ on a new financing round with an initial target of $100 million.
Asย ofย now in beta, Worldcoin is an Ethereum-based cryptoย token designed toย facilitate something akin to a universal basic income for people worldwide. The project intendsย to become the worldโs largest and most inclusive identity and financial network, built around World ID and the Worldcoin cryptoย token, with the eventual goal of becoming a DAO-like entity with decentralized decision-making.
Althoughย while Worldcoin reveals Unitedย States citizens and those living in โother restricted areasโ cannot receive Worldcoins, the company reveals it has onboarded nearly two Million users across 5 continents.
The project faced pushback almost instantly when the WorldID project announced that it would utilize retina scans to verify the account holder was human and not a bot in an process dubbed Proof of Personhood.
Tools for Humanity has stated that the eyeball scans are destroyed once processed. Still, skeptics, including famed whistleblower Edward Snowden, are not ready to give that level of trust to a tech company.
Regardlessย of its detractors, Bogart reveals the team at Blockchainย Tech Financialย resources has seen enough to be satisfied that Tools for Humanity will do as they said.
โHopefully, [Worldcoin] can provide more information in an open nature that will give more people that assurance,โ Bogart stated. โItโs a major hurdle for themโitโs something they have to get over because inย theย end people should be skeptical up until they feel confident that thatโs essentially the case.โ
