The antidote to bots, hacks, and online scams could be your eyeballs, but wait, there's

more.

From American Public Media, this is Marketplace Tech, I'm Lily Jamali.

On its face, the project known as WorldCoin seems simple.

To get your eyeballs scanned by a shiny, metallic orb, and depending on the country, get some

cryptocurrency in exchange.

So far, more than two million people have signed up for a world ID, according to the

company behind WorldCoin.

The goal of all of this is to prove a person behind an online account is a real person.

But regulators are skeptical.

After thousands lined up at registration centers in Kenya, the country became the first

to shut down WorldCoin over regulatory concerns.

The project is being investigated there and in Argentina, Germany, and elsewhere.

Critics claim world IDs have been sold as fake IDs on virtual black markets.

The company has enhanced security measures in response.

And the way this data is collected, getting people, some in developing countries to give

up their digital identities for money has also raised red flags.

There's more from the BBC's Liana Bern, who visited a scanning site in London.

I don't know about you, but when Sam Altman, the boss of the company that built ChatGPT,

launched this digital coin that you get in exchange for a scan of your eyeballs, I was

like, okay, we're literally crossing over into a science fiction film here.

The project, which is called WorldCoin, has been described as dystopian.

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