PANews reported on May 6 that according to Decrypt, the Kenyan High Court ruled that Sam Altman's World project (formerly Worldcoin) illegally collected citizens' biometric data and required it to delete all iris information collected in Kenya within 7 days and permanently stop inducing data collection with cryptocurrency rewards. The judge determined that the project had not been approved by the Office of the Data Protection Commissioner (ODPC) and that the "consent" obtained by issuing WLD tokens was invalid, violating the country's constitutional privacy protection principles.
This is the second major blow to the World project in Kenya, where the ban on operations was lifted in June 2024 after a police investigation. In addition to Kenya, the project was recently suspended in Indonesia due to incomplete registration, and has previously faced regulatory scrutiny in Hong Kong, Germany, Brazil and other places. In response, World is turning to the US market and has opened registration in six cities including Atlanta and San Francisco.
