A curious new entrant to the top download charts on the Play Store in Kenya has taken over over the past week. That entrant is the World App, the wallet for Worldcoin, a cryptocurrency project whose rollout around the world started last week and has taken the country by storm.
According to app analytics and market intelligence platform App Annie, the World App is the number 1 app overall on the Google Play Store in Kenya. A quick glance at the Play Store reveals the same. The app has topped all categories, not just the finance one where it belongs. Curiously, just a week ago, the app was nowhere to be seen.
The World App’s rise in popularity on the Play Store is attributable to the huge turnout by Kenyans at various sites across the nation’s capital, Nairobi, where registrations for the Worldcoin crypto project are ongoing.
In order for one to get their WLD, the crypto token that is being issued to those who successfully sign up for Worldcoin, they need to, first, register themselves through the mobile app.
From there on, they have their biometrics (iris) taken using the orb device that has become synonymous with Worldcoin. After the iris scan and with their biodata captured, they get what Worldcoin is calling a World ID, a unique key generated from the biodata obtained that Worldcoin believes will be essential in differentiating real humans from AI bots in the future. Then they are gifted the WLD tokens that thousands of Kenyans have been queuing to get and quickly convert to cash. The tokens are deposited in the same World App from where they can be converted to cash using various means we will not get into. This explains the app’s surge in popularity over the last few days.
The Office of the Data Protection Commissioner has urged Kenyans to be wary of the data they are giving to Worldcoin.
“The Office of the Data Protection Commissioner (ODPC) calls for increased vigilance from the public as it continues to engage with Worldcoin, an entity processing activities of iris data through an Orb, to ensure compliance with the Data Protection Act, 2019,” a statement from the office reads.
