WorldCoin makes the Orb software open source and implements ‘Privacy Protection’.

The Worldcoin Foundation said in a blog post that it has open-sourced components of the software that runs Iris Scanning Orbs and has made it available to the public.

According to the announcement, core components of the Orb software are available on GitHub under the MIT/Apache 2.0 dual license. The new open source components “complement” the previously released hardware.

The release includes the code on Orb that is critical to capturing images and securely transferring them to the production application.

WorldCoin says the publicly available iris recognition software and repositories represent a “major advance” in creating transparency for Orbi's image processing and verifiable privacy claims.

In addition to unlocking more software behind the popular metal, WorldCoin has unveiled another privacy feature called “Private Protection”.

This new feature involves sending data to WorldCoin as a data packet signed with Orb's private key and then encrypted with a user-generated public key before being transmitted to the user's mobile phone.

The developer says this means users “always remain in control of their data” and only the individual can decrypt this biometric data. Worldcoin said:

Once the encrypted data is sent from Orbi to the individual world application, there is no unencrypted copy of this data anywhere.

According to the developer, the feature could reduce the time users have to return to the Orb to verify their World ID.

Related: Data privacy and security concerns concern half of tech industry users: report

This Worldcoin update comes as the company faces scrutiny from global regulators over privacy issues. In the year On March 21, the Kenyan government rejected a request from the United States government to lift the ban on the WorldCoin project.

The government has said it will ban Worldcoin activities in the country until the security of the Kenyan public is ensured and the integrity of financial details is provided.

In the year On March 18, Worldcoin announced on its blog that it “operates legally wherever it is located” and fully complies with all laws and regulations governing data collection and data transfer.

But, in early March, he got more pushback. At this time, Spain's data protection agency asked WorldCoin to stop collecting and processing data locally and issued a temporary ban on its operations.

WorldCoin was founded by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman's artificial intelligence (AI)-based chatbot ChatGPT. OpenAI has decided not to open source the code for AI models at this time.

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