The native cryptocurrency of Sam Altman's Worldcoin Project, WLD, has seen an 80% increase in value over the past week. Currently, WLD is trading at $4.50 with a market cap of $584 million and a trading volume of $602 million in the last 24 hours. A mysterious whale trader, known as wallet 0x0007, has withdrawn 2.09 million WLD tokens worth $5.82 million from Binance, contributing to the recent surge in WLD's value. The rise in WLD's value may be attributed to the buzz surrounding OpenAI's Sora project, which has sparked interest in AI-driven content creation tools and their potential for technological innovation.

OrangeNews reported that Hong Kong is investigating WorldCoin for suspected illegal collection of customer iris data. The Hong Kong authorities searched six locations of "Worldcoin" in Hong Kong, including Yau Ma Tei, Kwun Tong, Wan Chai, Cyberport, Central, and Causeway Bay, based on a court order. The Hong Kong authorities urge citizens to be vigilant and not to provide biometric personal information casually.

Blockchain startup Worldcoin, backed by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, has announced the launch of a new Orb device. The device, which scans users' eyeballs to verify their identity, has been controversial due to concerns over privacy and ethics. The new Orb will have a more friendly appearance and will launch in the first half of 2024. Despite criticism, Worldcoin has raised $250 million in funding and claims to have over 190,000 new signups in the last week.

The Worldcoin Foundation has announced that its Iris recognition inference system (IRIS) project is open source to increase transparency of the Worldcoin system. Reportedly, researchers can access the code on Github, which can help promote iris recognition innovation and push for core component collaboration in the Worldcoin project. The open source of IRIS can also help researchers understand the performance of iris recognition compared to other biometric features such as fingerprints, faces, and palm prints, and is expected to promote further research on iris recognition systems. The foundation encourages researchers to view the open source materials and collaborate, and detailed documentation and code can be obtained on Github.

Worldcoin has officially announced a partnership with social network DAO organization Friends With Benefits (FWB) to expand human participation in the digital economy. The two sides will hold an event called "The Paradox of Personhood" at Feria Material in Mexico City to explore the issue of human identity in the age of artificial intelligence.

Worldcoin stated that the number of times Argentinian users have used World ID for verification has reached a record high of 500,000. Among them, there were nearly 16,000 Orb verifications in a single day at the end of December last year. Currently, over 1% of Argentinian users have verified their World ID, which is close to the milestones achieved by Chile (1.5%), Spain (0.8%), and Portugal (2.5%).

After successfully launching World ID 2.0 and the open-source Worldcoin iris recognition pipeline in mid-December, it is now possible to perform WorldID verification in Singapore using the project's custom hardware device, Orb. The full list of verification locations can be found on the Worldcoin Orb location page. In addition to World ID verification, project contributor Tools for Humanity (TFH) has become a member of the Association of Startup and Tech Companies: ACCESS and the Singapore Fintech Association (SFA).

Worldcoin released its latest blog post stating that with the release of its World ID 2.0 and upgrade suite (including the World ID application and level), Worldcoin provides retailers with a powerful new way to prevent fraud and conduct promotions aimed at fairly benefiting customers.

Worldcoin has launched World ID 2.0, an upgraded version of its identity platform that introduces Apps, a new way to build and use integrations to verify online accounts using World ID. The platform has three "Levels" that provide access to a broader range of use cases, including face authentication. World ID Apps allow users to verify accounts and apply a verification status similar to the blue checkmark used on some social media platforms. The platform uses Zero-Knowledge Proof cryptography and has already seen almost 5 million individuals register for World IDs.

According to sources cited by Citizen Digital on December 14th, Worldcoin has been in talks with the Kenyan government to restore its operations in Kenya. The sources revealed that an agreement has been reached between the two parties, allowing the US-based company to resume its operations under new guidelines.