The Download: Deception, exploited workers, and free cash: How Worldcoin recruited its first half a million test users

On a sunny morning last December, Iyus Ruswandi, a 35-year-old furniture maker in the village of Gunungguruh, Indonesia, was woken up early by his mother. A technology company was holding some kind of "social assistance giveaway" at the local Islamic elementary school, she said, and she urged him to go. When he got there, representatives of Worldcoin were collecting emails and phone numbers, or aiming a futuristic metal orb at villagers' faces to scan their irises and other biometric data. Two months before Worldcoin appeared in Ruswandi's village, the San Francisco–based company called Tools for Humanity emerged from stealth mode. The company's website described Worldcoin as an Ethereum-based "new, collectively owned global currency that will be distributed fairly to as many people as possible."