At Nairobi’s Imaara shopping mall on a quiet Thursday, two dozen people stood in line to have their irises scanned. It was the fourth day after the official launch of Worldcoin, a global blockchain project championed by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman. The line was made up of a mix of college students, artists, and boda boda drivers — all registering their biometrics to the blockchain to participate in “the world’s largest identity and financial public network,” as the Worldcoin founders describe it.

But the individuals in line weren’t drawn by Altman’s lofty ideals. Instead, they were there to collect the sign-up bonus of 25 worldcoins — roughly 7,100 Kenyan shillings, or $50.

“It’s been so busy the past two days,” said one attendant at the Worldcoin booth in Imaara, who asked not to be named because she isn’t authorized to speak to reporters. “I think it’s because more people are hearing about it … seeing Worldcoin trending on Twitter, WhatsApp.”

Announced at the height of the NFT craze, Worldcoin is one of the most ambitious projects to emerge from the blockchain boom, using a combination of cryptocurrency and biometric registration to create a new kind of global identity service. Worldcoin claims more than 2 million people have already registered for the service, but with the official launch on July 24, they’re trying to bring even more people on board, setting up booths in 20 new cities around the world where curious users can register.

Rest of World’s reporters visited Worldcoin booths in Nairobi, Bengaluru, and Hong Kong to get a better sense of who was signing up for the service and why. In all three cities, the surge of interest was driven primarily by the sign-up bonuses. Relatively few people were familiar with the goals of the project, and rarely did their enthusiasm for the bonuses translate to an enthusiasm for the Worldcoin project or cryptocurrency more broadly.

In each city, reporters described a rush of visitors eager to sign up for the service. The most intense interest came in Bengaluru, where sign-up locations in both the Vega City Mall and Mantri Square Mall had to be closed after overwhelming crowds became disruptive. Even after the locations stopped taking sign-ups, a steady stream of visitors arrived to try their luck.

Word of the sign-up bonuses has spread quickly, with little context. WhatsApp was particularly effective in driving interest in Kenya, as word of free money spread from group to group. “Those who haven’t gotten them [tokens] should visit these malls,” read one mass text viewed by Rest of World, sent to a group of 238