As the Worldcoin project involves iris scanning, it raises substantial privacy concerns, according to Buterin. Even though the system currently only stores hashed versions of iris scans, not the actual images, and aims to protect user identity with ZK-SNARKs and other cryptographic techniques, there is an inherent risk of identity-related information being misused or leaked, Buterin said. “At the very least, if someone else scans your iris, they can check it against the database to determine whether or not you have a World ID. Potentially, iris scans might reveal more information,” he added.