An open letter to the founders of Worldcoin

Sam, Alex, Tiago — public letter, no surprise, no ambush. We have written what amounts to several hundred pages of analysis and critique of your project elsewhere. Here, in one place, are the four points where we agree, the two where we disagree, and the one place we'd like to collaborate.

Where we agree

One. Proof of personhood is a foundational primitive. The world needs a way to know "this is a unique human." Without it, every other identity question collapses. Two. A biometric anchor at consumer scale is a reasonable solution to the unique-human problem. The orb is more elegant than its critics give it credit for. Three. Open protocol-design is correct. The fact that World ID is meaningfully integrable across applications without permission is a public good, even if the consumer experience is opinionated. Four. Distributing economic value to verified humans is a moral position we share. Token issuance to attested humans, not to wallets, is the right shape.

Where we disagree

One. The iris is not revocable. For agent delegation in particular, we believe the unrevocable root is dangerous. We have written about this at length in our analysis of AgentKit; the disagreement is technical, not philosophical. Two. Proof of personhood without proof of work is necessary but insufficient for the agent era. The verb of "what did this person do" is missing. We are betting our company on the addition of that verb; we suspect you will eventually add it too, and the question is whether your substrate accommodates it gracefully or requires a new launch.

Where we'd like to collaborate

Cross-protocol trust. A user with a World ID and a Manav DID should be able to present both as a single, stronger credential — biometric proof of personhood from your protocol, work attestations and delegation chains from ours, both verifiable independently, each strengthening the other for relying parties that need both. We have proposed this technically twice; we have not heard back. The third time we are putting it in a public letter.

Why we are writing publicly

Because the alternative — sniping at each other in private and competing in public — does not serve the category. The agent identity stack is large enough for proof-of-personhood and proof-of-human-work to coexist as complementary rather than substitutional. The people building both protocols benefit from saying so out loud.

The next move

If you would like to talk, we'll find time. If not, we'll keep building, you'll keep building, and the relying parties will integrate the version of the stack that works. We are betting on a stacked future. We hope you are too.

Common objections

Two objections worth answering. Stated values do not survive growth pressure — true historically, which is why we put structural mechanisms (open-source, governance, protocol-enforced custody) behind the words rather than just the words. This sounds like marketing — the test will be the audit hashes, the protocol design, and the operating agreements, not the prose.

Frequently asked questions

What does this commitment cost us if we honor it? Real money in the years where the temptation would have been highest. We are pricing it in upfront because the commitment is structural, not aspirational.

Where do we publish this commitment? Here, on the protocol governance page, and in the operating agreements with our investors. Anyone can audit whether the commitment is being kept by reading the audit hashes we publish quarterly.

What if leadership changes? The commitment is structural enough that a new leadership cannot quietly reverse it. The protocol mechanics make the breach detectable; the legal commitments add a second layer; the cultural commitments add a third.

Where to start

For the wider posture, read manav vs worldcoin and proof of personhood vs pohw. The values, the protocol, and the operating model only fit together when read in that order.

What we share, and where we part

We share the central thesis: humans need a digital signal of personhood, and that signal cannot be controlled by any platform. We share the conviction that crypto rails matter for the credibility of that signal. We share the belief that getting this wrong is an existential mistake, not a UX failure. Where we part is the geometry of the trust assumption. Worldcoin asks the user to trust the orb operator, the iris-template hash function, the foundation that signs the issuance. Manav asks the user to trust their own wallet, the issuers they choose, and the math the verifier checks. The first model concentrates trust at one institution; the second distributes it across many. We argue the second is more durable because it does not depend on any one institution remaining honest, well-funded, or extant in twenty years. Both models can co-exist. The market will decide which one earns the longer half-life.

The category is bigger than either of us. The cooperation we extend now compounds into the durability we both need later.