Blania: World ID is testing human-verification badges on Tinder in Japan
Alex Blania · How Bots, Deepfakes and AI Agents Are Forcing a New Internet Identity Layer | Alex Blania on a16z · Apr 2, 2026 · at 16:33
Alex Blania is the co-founder and CEO of Tools for Humanity, the organization behind World (formerly Worldcoin). He explains real-world applications of World ID biometric verification in online dating.
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“So, so we started in Japan and like as a test market, and it's essentially exactly what we just discussed. It is if you verified with an orb, you get a little batch that You know, signals to other people that you are in fact a human.”
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“We disregarded it basically immediately because we assumed that, you know, eventually everything that is just digital and AI will be able to do as well. Yeah, exactly. So an AI will be able to have a GitHub account and we'll be able to post Test and owner acco…”
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“And how we approach that is we have multi-party computation. And so that essentially means that, so in our case, when you verify with an orb. You know, we take all these pictures they get computed on the device, and then they actually get split up in multiple …”
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“And so I think, you know, in a year from now, it's just going to be a full commodity and it's going to be super photorealistic and absolutely real time.”
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“In a world of AI, having a human network is going to be this incredibly important thing. And so actually, yeah, two things like one, you will need a proof of human, but then second, it will have very strong network effects.”
Blania: Social platforms will fail attempting phone face biometrics for human verification
“My guess is over the next couple months, we will see things like these platforms trying to use things like face biometrics on the phone, which, you know, I know it will break, so it's fine, but I think we'll go through that cycle now.”