DC Builder | Research Engineer at Worldcoin Foundation — Proving Personhood in a Digital Era

In this episode of Blocklayer Podcast, Kenzi Takahashi, Sachi Shiokava, and Diksha Desai speak with DC Builder, Research Engineer at Worldcoin Foundation, about one of the hardest problems on the internet: proving you’re a real human — without giving up privacy.

DC Builder breaks down the project’s approach to decentralization and its mission to expand access to digital identity and finance globally — with the broader goal of making distribution in the digital economy more fair. We unpack the “web of trust” challenge, why biometrics are both powerful and controversial, and what it actually takes to verify personhood at scale.

We also dig into how privacy-preserving cryptography fits into the picture, including the use of Semaphore for anonymous signaling and membership proofs. And because the lines between crypto and AI are blurring fast, we explore the emerging ZKML space and other crypto–AI projects that are pushing the frontier of what on-chain systems can verify.

Expect a deep conversation on identity, decentralization, privacy tradeoffs, and DC Builder’s path through Web3.

This episode was supported by Diksha Desai and Sachi Shiokava.