Author: Golden Financial Reporter Jessy
Recently, Allen, who once found black people in Kenya to do Worldcoin KYC and then resold the account to domestic users, returned to China. The products that replace Worldcoin that users find on Xianyu are the third parties in Africa like Allen.
But now this business is not easy to do, Worldcoin is officially launched, the currency price is transparent, and there is no gray space. Coupled with the recent political instability in Kenya, he suspended his KYC business and returned to China.
This business lasted for more than three months. At the most, I could earn 20,000 yuan a day at a local push point that can do iris verification. But the most profitable days only lasted for two weeks, and that was May, when Worldcoin was the hottest in China. At that time, the growth of new local users was beyond common sense, and operators soon discovered the tricks.
Here is Alan’s dictation:
This business became difficult later on. Before I returned to China, one of our employees was caught by the local police and released after paying nearly 250 yuan (the local minimum wage is about 900 yuan per month). The police arrested people with the crime of “disturbing public order” similar to the domestic one.
What we did was to do KYC for about three months. I have a full time job of my own in Kenya so this business is a part time job for me. This business is not difficult. I found the local push point set up by the local operator, and the local staff I found brought the hired migrant workers to verify the iris KYC on their behalf. Initially, the wages for these migrant workers were US$1. Later, as the number of teams doing third-party KYC verification increased and the competition became fierce, their wages increased to US$3.
99% of this matter is driven by the Chinese. The competition was still very fierce. Later, when the local Chinese saw that there was money to be made, they flocked to do this. On the one hand, the wages of migrant workers were rising, and on the other hand, the wages of local employees were also rising. In the early days, the cost for us to get an account was between six and seven dollars, and later it rose to nine or twelve dollars.
The later rising costs mainly came from the consumption of store staff. It is said that we always take a few people to finish sweeping, and then bring a few people there, they will definitely find it strange, so I have to give them a little tip before they let me continue to do it.
The hottest time of Worldcoin in China was the beginning of June. At that time, we would find about a hundred people to verify each operation point every day, but such days did not last long. After more than a week, the local operators found something was wrong. up. Worldcoin’s local promotion model is that one operator manages a large area, and a country is divided into five or six large areas, and each large area will have more than a dozen or twenty stores. About every two or three stores are monopolized by a Chinese third party like me. Regional operators found that the data of some stores was much higher than that of other stores. Once they checked, they knew where the tricks were. In order to rectify this “gray production”, the verification business in Kenya was tentatively scheduled for a week at that time. I estimate that there are about a dozen Chinese teams doing this. Then there are thousands of fake users a day.
Ordinary people in Kenya have limited awareness of Web3, and the promotion of Worldcoin in Kenya is not good. Before starting this business, I once passed by one of their verification points that can scan irises, which is similar to the sheds set up in domestic communities for community activities. I didn’t realize what they were doing at the time. I realized that it was a Worldcoin push point after I saw someone posting related content on Twitter after I got home.
If there were no third parties like us to find people to register, the actual number of registrations in a local store would be about ten a day. This data is obtained from my observation there: about one real user can be seen on-site to verify registration every hour. The main reasons for my lack of real users are as follows: First, the local infrastructure is very poor, and the mobile phones used by local people are not like the smart phones used in our country. The operation of Web3 applications has high requirements for mobile phones and network speed. The second is that local people have little knowledge of Web3. For example, the migrant workers we employ will not accept U settlement remuneration, and all we send them are local banknotes.
It seems that Kenya, including most of Africa, is not a suitable place for Web3 application promotion. I also helped Debox to promote locally before. They just contacted Chinese people from various places to be their ambassadors, but the effect was mediocre. I live locally, and I basically don’t see any other Web3 projects being pushed on a large scale. Local people are more cautious, and if your project becomes bigger, the local government will also want to get a share of it.
When we do this, we must consider the input-output ratio and the outlet. Worldcoin should have been promoted in Africa in October last year, but the project was not popular at that time. At that time, it was impossible to make money in it. It was not until openai became popular in China this year that this project was discovered by everyone. This business opportunity was fully discovered by Chinese people in May and June.
You calculate, when the cost is 6 US dollars, an account can be sold for 40 US dollars, and one push point can be used by 100 people, that is 20,000 yuan. At that time, we recruited a general manager, who led five groups, and these five groups ran at various points every day, and one point could run 80-100 accounts.
In the early stage, the project party will also acquiesce in our behavior of finding someone to do KYC on behalf of us. After all, there are user growth and good-looking data. In the early stage of the Web3 project, it is still for investors, and only with data can it raise money. But in the later stage, the project party must definitely distance itself from this kind of behavior, and no longer allow so many fake users. In fact, this node is to release news that the project will be launched at the end of June. In these African countries including Kenya, the data rise is too strange. Moreover, Worldcoin itself emphasizes a real KYC, and each person has only one iris.
There is a saying on the Internet that our behavior and the promotion of Worldcoin in Africa are the neo-colonialism of Web3. I would think that people who say this kind of thing “why not eat minced meat”. Meal money.
And what Worldcoin is doing is actually sending money to people in these third world countries. I think from this point of view, this project is quite great. But if the project wants to go far, there are still many things to do.
I work in Africa and have some observations about the local Web3 ecology. I think the Web3 project that is more suitable for promotion here is actually a lightweight wallet. The light weight can adapt to the local infrastructure level, and the wallet may meet the needs of the local people. For some African countries, their local currency exchange rates are very unstable, and holding a certain amount of mainstream virtual currency can resist risks. This wallet can be promoted in cooperation with the government during the promotion process, and then it can give local users a certain rebate, and the effect should be good.
