French privacy watchdog questions Worldcoin’s data collection method: Report

July 28, 2023 Coin Telegraph

chatGPT

The French data protection agency CNIL said that it finds the legality of Worldcoin’s collection methods “questionable” as are its conditions for storing the data.

The French data protection agency, also called the Commission Nationale Informatique & Libertés (CNIL), is reportedly questioning the legality of data collection methods conducted by Worldcoin, according to a Reuters report.

In an email to Reuters on July 28, CNIL said:

“The legality of this collection seems questionable, as do the conditions for storing biometric data."

CNIL also stated in the email to Reuters that it had initiated investigations and has been supporting the efforts of the Bavarian state authority in Germany with its investigation into the subject matter.

Reuters also reported on July 25 that Worldcoin may face inquiries from data regulators in the United Kingdom post-launch.

OpenAI, the company behind the popular artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot ChatGPT, launched Worldcoin on June 24. The initative requires users to provide a scan of their iris in exchange for a digital ID and free cryptocurrency.

According to the company’s website, 2.1 million people have already signed up with the project, though mostly during the trial period throughout the course of the last two years.

The company claimed in a post on X that since its official launch, “a unique human is now verifying their World ID every 7.6 seconds & new records are being set daily.”

Since Worldcoin launched, proof of personhood demand has surged. On average, a unique human is now verifying their World ID every 7.6 seconds & new records are being set daily.

Thank you for your patience with the project as more work is done to better meet worldwide demand. pic.twitter.com/gPmr0oQWCR
— Worldcoin (@worldcoin) July 28, 2023

Worldcoin has posted photos on X of its orbs in various cities across the world since its launch on Monday, including Seoul, South Korea, Mexico City, Mexico and Paris, France.

Despite all the hype, Worldcoin has received mixed reactions from the crypto community. Some users pointed out the potential failures due to its centralization, while others say proof-of-personhood is necessary with the increasing presence of AI.

Additional reports have surfaced claiming that after its launch Worldcoin has struggled to recruit new sign-ups, with the three designated locations in Hong Kong only seeing around 200 sign-ups on the first day, and a total of 600 overall.

However, the next day Sam Altman, the company’s co-founder, rebutted the claims by posting a video on X of a long queue of people in Japan waiting to complete iris scans.

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Sequoia slashes its crypto fund by 66% after industry collapses: Report

July 28, 2023 Coin Telegraph

Coin Telegraph

The $85-billion venture capital firm launched the Sequoia Crypto Fund in February 2022.

Venture capital giant Sequoia Capital reportedly downsized its cryptocurrency fund from $585 million to $200 million, amid a liquidity crunch and a pivot away toward smaller crypto players.

According to a July 27 Wall Street Journal report, the tech-focused VC firm told investors in March it would reduce its Sequoia Crypto Fund — along with its ecosystem fund — to better reflect changed market conditions.

Sequoia Capital curbed crypto investments by a hefty 65% , opting for a nurturing stance on startups. Not a volatile market apathy, but strategic cognition, folks! #CryptoInvestments $BTC https://t.co/hfsAAd8jeV pic.twitter.com/8JvtyShg0n
— Chain Review (@Chain_Review) July 27, 2023

The cryptocurrency fund will now focus more on backing early-stage startups, given the recent crypto industry turmoil that took away many of the opportunities to back larger companies.

Another motive behind the cuts is to lower the capital threshold and thus the barrier to entry for investors to partake in Sequoia’s fund offerings, according to the sources.

“We made these changes to sharpen our focus on seed-stage opportunities and to provide liquidity to our limited partners,” reportedly said Sequoia in remarks to the Financial Times. The firm added it had returned more than $15 billion to investors over the past three years.

The firm’s cryptocurrency fund launched in February 2022, when the market cap of the cryptocurrency market was 39.1% down from its all-time high of $3 trillion in November 2021.

One of the firm’s toughest blows in recent times was its $214 million investment into the now bankrupt FTX, which the firm later marked down to $0.

Sequoia Capital’s $214M #FTX stake marked down to $0 ⚰️ pic.twitter.com/RHQJaRq1dL
— CryptoSavingExpert ® (@CryptoSavingExp) November 10, 2022

Cointelegraph reached out to Sequoia Capital for comment but did not receive an immediate response.

Sequoia’s reported move is reflective of a broader trend among venture capital firms that are choosing to downsize their cryptocurrency bets.

Venture capital investments fell 29.7% in June, with $779.32 million raised across 62 separate deals, according to data from the Cointelegraph Research Venture Capital Database.

Venture capital inflows have fallen 77.7% from June 2023 compared to June 2022.

*VC fund inflows into the cryptocurrency market over the last 12 months. Source: Cointelegraph Research*

However not every VC firm is reducing its cryptocurrency portfolio.

Polychain Capital and Coinfund recently raised $200 million and $152 million for respective investment and seed funds earlier this month.

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Worldcoin rebuts reports of lackluster takeup as Altman cites Japan queues

July 27, 2023 Coin Telegraph

Coin Telegraph

A video shared by Worldcoin co-founder Sam Altman shows a long queue of people in Japan reportedly waiting to collect $50 worth of Worldcoin (WLD) tokens or 25 WLD.

Amid discussions around the falling interest in Worldcoin —the blockchain project dedicated to building a user identity network — its co-founder Sam Altman shared a video that shows people in Japan lined up to give away their iris scans in exchange for “free” Worldcoin (WLD) tokens.

A video shared by Altman shows a long queue of people in Japan reportedly waiting to collect $50 worth of Worldcoin (WLD) tokens or 25 WLD. In exchange, the users are required to provide their identification through an iris scan.

day 3 of @worldcoin launch, crazy lines around the world. one person getting verified every 8 seconds now. pic.twitter.com/vHRu1sWMT3
— Sam Altman (@sama) July 26, 2023

“One person getting verified every 8 seconds now,” wrote Altman as he shared the video of people lining up for the Orb. However, Worldcoin has not yet responded to Cointelegraph’s request for comment to confirm the accuracy of the information shared on Twitter (rebranded to X).

As explained in the Worldcoin introductory letter, the Orb is a biometric verification device that provides a World ID to users upon successful biometric data collection. The company plans to set up Orb venues worldwide to expedite the onboarding process on a global scale.

While Japanese investors seemingly showed a greater interest in Worldcoin, not many Hong Kongers shared the same enthusiasm. As Cointelegraph reported, the three Orbs in Hong Kong cumulatively reported just 200 sign-ups on the first day and 600 in total.

Although on the surface, Worldcoin sign-ups seem like a step forward toward crypto adoption, entrepreneurs, including Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey and Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin believe the proposed system would be catastrophic if it were to work against the ethos — privacy, accessibility, decentralization — that the crypto ecosystem was founded on.

Worldcoin may face resistance from the data regulators in the United Kingdom, as the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) reportedly raised concerns over privacy and critical biometric data safety.

However, an ICO spokesperson said they “have not announced anything publicly to confirm or deny if we are looking into Worldcoin. Until then, I would not be able to pass comments.”

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Meta Platforms fined $14 million for Onavo privacy issues: Report

July 26, 2023 Coin Telegraph

Meta Platforms fined million for Onavo privacy issues: Report

Australia

The decision in an Australian court was driven by increasing concerns about illicit activities in the crypto market and the desire to safeguard investors.

An Australian court has reportedly ordered Meta Platforms, the owner of Facebook, to pay fines amounting to 20 million Australian dollars ($14 million) for collecting user data through a smartphone application, Onavo.

According to a Reuters report, the Federal Court of Australia has directed Meta, along with its subsidiaries Facebook Israel and the discontinued app, to reimburse $270,356 (A$400,000) in legal costs to the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC). The ACCC initiated the civil lawsuit against Meta, alleging that Onavo was promoted as a privacy protection tool, but failed to openly reveal its data collection methods.

Facebook used Onavo to collect users' location, time and frequency using other smartphone apps and websites they visited for its own advertising purposes, Judge Wendy Abraham said in a written judgment, according to the report.

Meta reportedly stated that the ACCC had recognized their lack of intent to mislead customers and they emphasized their efforts in developing tools over the past few years to provide users with increased transparency and control over their data usage.

The imposed fine marks the conclusion of one aspect of Meta's legal challenges in Australia concerning its management of user data, Reuters said. This legal matter emerged amid a scandal involving Meta's association with data analytics firm Cambridge Analytica during the 2016 United States election.

However, Meta's legal woes are not over yet, as it is reportedly also facing a civil court action by Australia's Office of the Information Commissioner regarding its dealings with Cambridge Analytica specifically in Australia.

Cointelegraph reached out to Meta for more information, but had not received a response bthe time of publication.

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Google hit with lawsuit over new AI data scraping privacy policy

July 12, 2023 Coin Telegraph

A week after Google updated its privacy policy to allow data scraping for AI training purposes the company is now facing a class action lawsuit.

Google is now facing a lawsuit in the follow-up to its recent privacy policy update that accuses the tech giant of misusing large amounts of data, including copyrighted material in artificial intelligence (AI) training.

The lawsuit was filed on July 11 by eight individuals who claim to represent “millions of class members” - internet users and copyright holders- who have had their privacy and property rights violated in light of Google’s recent updates to its privacy policy.

In its opening statement, the plaintiffs accuse Google of “harvesting data in secret” to build its AI products without consent.

“It has very recently come to light that Google has been secretly stealing everything ever created and shared on the internet by hundreds of millions of Americans.”

Google’s privacy policy changes now allow it to take data that is publicly available to use for artificial intelligence (AI) training purposes.

The lawsuit points out that Google’s decision not only violates rights, but gives it an “unfair advantage” compared to its competitors who lawfully obtain or purchase data to train AI. Ryan Clarkson of Clarkson Law Firm, the plaintiffs’ attorney, said in a statement in the suit that:

“Google must understand, once and for all: it does not own the internet, it does not own our creative works, it does not own our expressions of our personhood, pictures of our families and children, or anything else simply because we share it online.”

The plaintiffs argued that “publicly available” does not and has never entailed that it is “free to use for any purpose.”

According to the lawsuit, Google could potentially owe upwards of $5 billion in damages. It also requested a court order which would order Google to obtain users' explicit permission first.

This includes allowing users to opt out of its "illicit data collection,” along with the ability to delete already existing data or provide "fair compensation” to owners of the data.

Earlier this week, author and comedian Sarah Silverman, together with two other authors, filed a lawsuit against ChatGPT maker OpenAI and Meta for their use of copyrighted work without permission in AI training.

Prior to that, OpenAI was hit with another lawsuit for alleged data scraping,

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Arkham CEO rebuts claims of ‘snitch-to-earn’ program, says it’s to find bad actors

July 12, 2023 Coin Telegraph

Arkham

Arkham CEO Miguel Morel said public blockchains are "probably the worst possible way of keeping one's private information private.”

The chief of the startup blockchain intelligence platform Arkham has refuted claims by the crypto community that its new “Intel Exchange” is a “snitch-to-earn” or “dox-to-earn” system.

On a July 11 Twitter Space, Arkham CEO Miguel Morel discussed the public relations debacle that has unfolded this week over its marketplace.

Arkham’s Intel Exchange aimed to “deanonymize the blockchain” by rewarding users with a new token, ARKM, for revealing the identities behind otherwise anonymous blockchain addresses. It was launched on Binance Launchpad as a token sale this week.

The platform rapidly generated a lot of criticism on Crypto Twitter and was dubbed a “snitch-to-earn” system.

Morel disagreed with these claims and justified the platform saying it was designed to uncover scammers and hackers behind crypto exploits.

“Publicly available blockchains are probably the worst possible way of keeping one's private information private,” he said before adding that Arkham would retain control of the data:

“It's not a completely free market. So it's not like anybody can just post any piece of information and then it can go online.”

“There are a bunch of restrictions and guidelines, all of which we will be rolling out,” he added.

I'll be joining the @MarioNawfal CryptoTownHall at 14:45 UTC to have an open discussion about Arkham and our new Intel-to-Earn ecosystem.

See you there!https://t.co/PEfHI8aLBw
— Miguel Morel | Arkham (@RealMiguelMorel) July 11, 2023

Morel stated that the primary focus of its info exchange is uncovering trading firms, market makers, exchanges and very large institutions.

He added these large hedge funds and trading entities are “making money off of information about who's buying and selling large positions of a particular token.”

Another participant in the Twitter Space pointed out that Arkham has a responsibility to prevent abuse and may facilitate false accusations by so-called “crypto detectives,” however Morel maintained it will be properly governed.

“Thankfully, it'll actually be more vetted and more regulated than something like Twitter or Facebook because every bounty needs to be approved.”

This raised even more concerns from TV host Ran Neuner who said, “my issue is not with the system. My issue is with your company managing the data.”

Arkham came under fire this week for leaking user emails via its weblink referrals program which includes an easily decipherable string of characters in referral links that reveal the referring email address.

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48% fewer new crypto coders last year – developer report

July 10, 2023 Coin Telegraph

Coin Telegraph

Newcomers account for the highest percentage of developers that have left the industry over the past 12 months.

The number of new developers entering the cryptocurrency sector has dropped by nearly 50 percent over the past year, according to research from Electric Capital’s Developer Report.

The latest gauge of the state of the cryptocurrency developer ecosystem indicates that long-term coders that have worked in the industry for over a year commit more code and work more days than developers that have left.

According to the data, the cryptocurrency ecosystem has an estimated 21,300 monthly active open source developers as of June 1. The space has seen a 22% decline in the number of developers since June 2022.

The caveat is that developers that have exited the space are classified as “newcomers” that worked in the industry for less than a year. The impact of the departure of these developers was made less significant considering that they were responsible for less than 20% of all code commits over the past 12 months.

Long term cryptocurrency developers who’ve worked in the industry for more than a year are responsible for over 80% of committed code.

The Developer Report estimates that some 7,700 newcomer developers left the space since June 2022. Emerging developers that have worked in the industry for up to two years has increased by 1650 while established developers that have over two years of experience in the cryptocurrency space increase by 150.

The report notes that the decline in newcomer developers is due to fewer coders exploring work in the cryptocurrency space. This has been exacerbated by an ongoing bear market which has suppressed wider cryptocurrency markets.

Source: Electric Capital Developer Report

The analysts also suggest that while 2023’s retention of new developers has been significantly less that 2022 and 2021, the trend is not “abnormal” across a longer time frame.

“If we look at cohort retention analysis starting from 2015, we see that developers who join during bear markets leave faster.”

Newcomer developers typically enter the cryptocurrency sector around market peaks. There was a 70% dominance of newcomer developers six months after January 2018’s cryptocurrency market peak. This was followed by a 60% newcomer dominance in the six months following the November 2021 market all-time high.

Meanwhile emerging and established developers tend to dominate the sector when the cryptocurrency space enters bear market territory.

The second half of 2022 saw a spate of layoffs across the cryptocurrency industry as companies looked to downsize in response to tough market conditions. The industry then saw a decline in layoffs from February 2023, according to market research conducted by Cointelegraph.

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Ethereum NFT royalties hit two-year low as Bored Ape floor price falls below 30 ETH

July 6, 2023 Coin Telegraph

Blockchain

NFT royalties act as an important gauge of incoming revenues to fund ongoing development of various projects in the ecosystem.

Royalties earned by nonfungible token (NFT) projects have reached their lowest point in two years, according to a report from blockchain analytics firm Nansen.

Data shared with Cointelegraph highlights the low point for NFT royalties before the impact of a recent drop in the floor price of Bored Ape Yacht Club NFTs as well as controversy surrounding the launch of the Azuki Elementals collection.

April 2022 saw the peak of NFT royalties, with NFT creators bagging an estimated $75.7 million in royalties in a single week. According to Nansen’s data, BAYC creators Yuga Labs has earned a total of $165.5 million in royalties across its portfolio of NFT collections.

RTFKT has earned a total of $79.9 million in royalties from its collections, which includes the likes of CloneX. Azuki has scored $58.2 million from its zuki, Beanz, Elemental Beansa and Elementals collections.

Proof, the studio behind Moonbirds, netted $35 million in revenues while Doodles has made $27.4 million from its Doodles, Space Doodles, Genesis Box and Dooplicato collections. Pudgy Penguins’s revenue amounts to $8.3 million across its Pudgy Penguins, Lil Pudgys and Pudgy Rods drops.

Nansen highlights the importance of NFT royalties as an indicator of a studio’s financial foundation for ongoing development, given their role in generating revenue.

NFT marketplace OpenSea had been primarily responsible for distributing royalty payments to NFT projects up until 2023. The report notes that this trend changed once rival marketplace Blur implemented a policy which required a minimum of 0.5% royalties unless projects opted out or enforced full percentages.

OpenSea gave buyers the choice to pay royalties unless projects had opted out or imposed their specific percentage:

“Currently, OpenSea and Blur are on par with each other when it comes to the royalties paid through their respective marketplaces, with more royalties paid on Blur when the trading volume surges.”

**Total royalties paid to NFT projects. (Source: Nansen’s NFT Trends dashboard)**

Nansen’s data also reveals that the top 10 NFT collections have earned more than $345 million in royalties. Yuga Labs’ $150 million in royalties makes up 44% of the top 10. Interestingly, just 20 NFT projects have earned more than $10 million in royalties to date.

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Google updates its privacy policy to allow data scraping for AI training

July 4, 2023 Coin Telegraph

The latest updates to Google’s privacy policy reveal that Google may use any public information available to train its various AI products and services.

Google has made updates to its privacy policy which now allows it to take any publicly available data and use it for artificial intelligence (AI) training purposes.

The update to the company’s privacy policy came on July 1 and can be compared to previous versions of the policy via a link published on the site’s update page.

In the latest version, changes can be seen that include the addition of Google’s AI models, Bard and Cloud AI capabilities to the services it may train by using “information that’s publicly available online” or from “other public sources.”

*The updated Google policy conditions (in green) as of July 1, 2023. Source: screenshot*

The policy update infers that Google is now making it clear to the public and its users that anything that is publicly uploaded online could be used in its training processes with the current and future AI systems it develops.

This update from Google comes shortly after OpenAI, the developer of the popular AI chatbot ChatGPT was charged with a class-action lawsuit in California over allegedly scraping private information from users via the internet.

It claimed that OpenAI used data from millions of comments on social media, blogs, Wikipedia and other personal information from users to train ChatGPT without first getting consent to do so. The lawsuit concluded that this, therefore, violated the copyrights and privacy rights of millions of users on the internet.

Twitter’s recent change in the number of tweets users are able to access depending on their account verification status has caused rumors across the internet that it was imposed partially due to AI data scraping.

The documents of Twitter’s developers read that rate limits were imposed as a method to manage the volume of requests made to Twitter’s application program interface (API).

Elon Musk, the owner and former CEO of Twitter recently tweeted about the platform “getting data pillaged so much that it was degrading service for normal users.”

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Crypto Twitter has a persistent ‘fake followers’ problem, data reveals

July 3, 2023 Coin Telegraph

Coin Telegraph

Shiba Inu had the greatest number of fake followers at 10.26% or 80,000 accounts, while Avalanche and Polygon followed suit with 8.14% and 7.58% of fake accounts respectively.

Despite changes introduced by Twitter management since Elon Musk’s takeover, the issue around fake followers remains a persistent problem. As many as 10% of the followers of accounts belonging to crypto influencers and companies are fake, new data from dappGambl has revealed.

In April 2023, Musk introduced Twitter Blue — an $8 monthly subscription for verification — to increase the platform’s revenue while making it financially inviable for bots and fake accounts to operate. However, months later, dappGambl’s investigation found that up to 10% of followers from the most followed crypto accounts are fake.

When it comes to the official accounts of cryptocurrency tokens and ecosystems, Shiba Inu (SHIB) had the highest number of fake followers at 10.26% or 80,000 accounts, while Avalanche (AVAX) ranked second with 8.14% fake followers, followed by Polygon (MATIC) with 7.58% or 73,000 fake accounts.

dappGambl suspected that the relationship between Twitter accounts and their fake followers is dependent on the popularity of the tokens. By analyzing the social sentiment behind crypto accounts, dappGambl found that:

“Dai (DAI) is the most loved (popular) coin on Twitter whilst XRP (XRP) is the most hated (unpopular).”

Generally, the crypto community on Twitter sees DAI as the “future of money” while it tends to associate XRP with scams, states dappGambl.

When it comes to crypto influencers and entrepreneurs, Samson Mow boasts the highest percentage of fake followers among his total following. Mow is currently being followed by 26,000 fake accounts that represent 10% of his total following on Twitter.

Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey has 560,000 (8.62%) fake followers, while El Salvador President Nayib Bukele and Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin had nearly 6.5% of fake followers among his total count.

Other prominent figures with substantial fake followers include MicroStrategy co-founder Michael Saylor (6.16%), Binance CEO Changpeng ‘CZ’ Zhao (5.58%) and Tesla CEO Elon Musk (4.76%) among others.

Based on the total number of followers, over 6.7 million fake accounts currently follow Musk as he tries to eradicate the very problem. Some of the methods to identify fake accounts are — checking when the account was created, investigating the profile picture, account bio and tweets sent out by the account and checking the account's followers and following.

A popular Twitter bot that goes by the name of “Explain This Bob” was recently suspended after Musk called it a scam.

This sure looks like a scam crypto account. If so, it will be suspended.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 18, 2023

As Cointelegraph previously reported, the bot was created by Prabhu Biswal from India, which used OpenAI’s GPT-4 model to comprehend and provide responses to tweets by those who tagged the account.

Data

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