Recently, after the blockchain identity authentication platform Humanity Protocol announced that it had received US$30 million in financing at a valuation of US$1 billion, the CEO was revealed to have founded the unicorn company Tink Labs and went bankrupt. , causing investors to lose hundreds of millions of dollars. At the same time, Worldcoin, which also belongs to the DID track, is being controversial due to the upcoming unlocking of huge amounts of tokens, global regulatory setbacks, and the failure of OpenAI’s blessing effect.
Humanity Protocol, the new unicorn, has had a bad start. Worldcoin is in trouble with reputation and business development. The two unicorns in the DID track with a market value of US$1 billion are facing a new test.
Humanity Protocol is considered a benchmark A project on the same track as Worldcoin.
As a Polygon CDK-based identity system established in 2023, Humanity Protocol was developed in collaboration with the Human Institute, Animoca Brands, and Polygon Labs to provide an easy-to-access method for building human proofs in Web3 applications. and non-invasive method. Humanity Protocol plans to launch a testnet in the second quarter of this year, and its waiting list has exceeded 510,000 people.
In terms of biometric technology, unlike Worldcoin which uses iris scanning, Humanity Protocol uses palmprint recognition, which is considered a less intrusive authentication scheme. However, compared with palmprint, iris recognition has the advantages of uniqueness, stability and non-replicability of identity recognition. It has more advantages than other biometric recognition technologies in terms of comprehensive security performance, and due to the accuracy and stability of the technology The requirements for performance are relatively high, and the development difficulty and R&D costs are also relatively high.
In terms of complete ownership of user data and identity, Humanity Protocol has introduced zero-knowledge proof technology like Worldcoin; in terms of financing background, Worldcoin has completed multiple rounds of luxury financing, but its 1 billion valuation is Series A financing was achieved, and Humanity Protocol also completed multiple rounds of financing. At present, Humanity Protocol has officially announced that it has received $30 million in seed round financing led by Kingsway Capital, with participation from more than 20 institutions including Animoca Brands, Blockchain.com and Shima Capital. In addition, it has also raised approximately 1.5 million from KOLs. US dollars. According to PANews, the valuation of the KOL round is US$60 million.
Not only that, Humanity Protocol can also be easily accessed on smartphones like Worldcoin. The project will launch an app that uses a phone's camera to scan palm prints for authentication, and then introduce another layer of security using a network of palm veins and a small infrared camera for identity confirmation. In the future, this system is expected to be used in the KYC process of financial platforms, and even allow entry into physical places such as hotels and office buildings through palm prints. In addition, Humanity Protocol also plans to issue tokens to pay for verification fees.
Regarding the launch of the project, Polygon co-founder Sandeep Nailwal commented that Humanity Protocol can not only truly resist witch attacks, but also be able to natively integrate verifiable credentials into a decentralized validator node network. Laying the foundation for broader blockchain and real-world applications.
After attracting market attention due to its high valuation, Humanity Protocol CEO Terence Kwok was later reported by foreign media Protos to have almost bankrupted his smartphone company valued at US$1.5 billion. Burned $170 million of investor funds.
It is understood that Terence Kwok founded Tink Labs, a company headquartered in Hong Kong, in 2012. It has 12 million users worldwide and has successively won investment from FIH Group (a subsidiary of Foxconn Technology Group), Kai-Fu Lee’s Innovation Works and US Co-invested by Chairman Cai Wensheng and others, it mainly provides hotels with smartphones for guests to use during their stay. The goal is to provide guests with alternatives to roaming charges to improve their hotel experience and sell collected customer preference data. Interestingly, Terence Kwok’s father, Terence Kwok Desheng, is considered to be one of the important reasons behind Tink Labs’ acquisition of shares by heavyweight shareholders. He is a former Goldman Sachs star private banker whose major clients include wealthy individuals such as Lee Shau Kee and Robert Kuok.
According to the "Financial Times" report, Terence Kwok began to suffer losses due to multiple reasons such as aggressive expansion policies, roaming charges becoming cheaper and more popular, and hotels not wanting to pay for the mobile phones he gave away. Only in In 2017 and 2018, it suffered losses of nearly US$200 million, and later suffered a liquidity crisis. SoftBank, an investor in Tink Labs, forced the company to abruptly halt a major project because of concerns that the company was "shifting funds from Japanese joint ventures elsewhere to stay afloat," according to a former employee. Kwok allegedly struggled to pay its employees and contractors, and ultimately conducted mass layoffs before shutting down Tink Labs on August 1 of that year. In January 2020, Tink Labs’ European unit began liquidation and subsequently entered bankruptcy proceedings.
The former head of human resources operations at Tink Labs said, "I never thought it would last, but I didn't expect it would be closed so soon. Kwok only cares about 'making money.'" According to Fortune Insight previously According to the report, Terence Kwok also said during his entrepreneurial days at Tink Labs, "Once your business fails, you can go back to school. The opportunity cost is the lowest. Starting a business for three months is like studying for an MBA."
While Humanity Protocol is receiving heated discussion in the market, Worldcoin is in dire straits due to issues such as token unlocking, supervision, and high-level cash-outs by insiders. middle.
According to a recent analysis released by DeFi researcher @DefiSquared on the X platform, Worldcoin may become the largest wealth transfer event in this cycle. Worldcoin has serious inflation problems, and the fully diluted market value of token WLD is as high as 60 billion. The USD, which is depreciating by 0.6% daily due to token issuance and operator claims, and the amount of WLD unlocked will increase significantly in the coming months, could lead to a massive sell-off.
According to @DefiSquared analysis, on the one hand, once Worldcoin’s VC and team tokens begin to be unlocked, the supply of WLD will increase by 4% every day. According to Token Unlocks data, WLD will begin to face a daily selling pressure of $31.5 million on July 24 (calculated based on the price on May 16).
At the same time, Worldcoin revealed on its blog not long ago that World Assets, the subsidiary of the project foundation responsible for token issuance, will sell 500,000 to 1.5 million WLD every week in the next six months. According to the current In terms of value, the highest value is US$179 million. @DefiSquared pointed out that this part of the token is equivalent to 16.7% of the existing circulating supply (calculated based on 210 million circulating supply on May 16) and is sold at a discount. This part of the funds comes from the WLD token supply called " Community" portion is used to sell to counterparties to benefit the foundation.
“Worldcoin’s token economic model was designed to be predatory from the beginning to benefit the team and early investors. In December last year, the foundation even deliberately terminated the market maker contract (Note : Worldcoin previously announced that it would terminate agreements with five market makers on December 15, 2023), allowing prices to be squeezed high under low circulation. "According to CoinGecko's latest research data, WLD is among the top 300 in circulation by market value. One of the four crypto projects with the lowest volume. In this regard, @DefiSquared believes that this manipulative design of low circulation and high valuation directly benefits insiders because they can hedge the high-valued locked shares through contracts and over-the-counter transactions before unlocking.
In addition, @DefiSquared also pointed out that most retail investors may not even know that Sam Altman (OpenAI CEO) is no longer actively involved in Worldcoin, and the project has no relationship with OpenAI. According to Bloomberg reports in April this year, Worldcoin was seeking cooperation with technology giants such as OpenAI.
It is worth mentioning that Worldcoin is also facing regulatory bans or investigations in many places around the world, including Spain, Portugal, South Korea, and Hong Kong, due to user data privacy issues. For this reason, Worldcoin’s main supporters not only cooperate with the governments of relevant countries Meeting to improve government relations, it also open sourced the iris recognition inference system this year to enhance transparency and implement a new personal data self-hosting strategy. In addition, it also recently open sourced the new SMPC system and safely deleted the old iris code to help improve biometric data security. Similarly, Humanity Protocol may also face regulatory issues arising from user data collection.
The above is the detailed content of The identity of the unicorn in the track is questioned: Worldcoin faces multiple challenges, and the founder of Humanity is exposed about his failed entrepreneurial history. For more information, please follow other related articles on the PHP Chinese website!
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