Alex Blania, co-founder of controversial tech firm Worldcoin has broken silence over the decision by the Kenyan government to suspend its operations in the country.
In a statement on Thursday, Blania said the World ID is a digital identification method that allows one to prove that they are unique and a real person while remaining anonymous.
Blania, the project’s CEO who co-founded it with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, said while Worldcoin and Tools For Humanity (TFH) are pausing World ID verifications in Kenya to address the government’s concerns, its global rollout shall go on.
TFH is the Germany-based global hardware and software company which led the initial development of the Worldcoin protocol.
“TFH has paused World ID verifications in Kenya as we continue to work with local regulators to address their questions. We apologize to everyone in Kenya for the delay,” Blania said in a post on Twitter, which is rebranding to X.
“World ID is built for privacy. We look forward to resuming operations while continuing global rollout.”
The project launched last week has been rolling out in Kenya, Germany and France, among other countries.
It has seen a hysterical uptake locally; over 350,000 have scanned their eyeballs with the Worldcoin Orb to verify their online identity, called World ID.
There have, however, been privacy concerns and questions about the security of the biodata Worldcoin was collecting from Kenyans, heightened by the fact that new members were getting 25 free cryptocurrency tokens known as WLD after the process, which are currently valued at Ksh.8,256.
On Wednesday, Interior CS Kithure Kindiki said the state suspended world coin activities and any other entity that may similarly engage Kenyans.
He noted that the government is concerned by the ongoing activities which is involved in the registration of citizens through the collection of eyeball/iris data.
