With inflation and unemployment gripping the nation, a burgeoning network of intermediaries is convincing people to have their irises scanned at Worldcoin Orb centers.
You're looking at it wrong. This is a scheme to collect mass amounts of biometric data. What's the end goal? No idea, but I doubt it'll be to the benefit of mankind.
Even if you believe that, and trust the people running these scanning stations, synthetic images generated from biometric hashes are still a thing, such as with Masquerade.
Fingerprint ID does not work with hashes, you need images. I've worked with NGOs and integrated biometric identification systems.
I haven't had to pull the iris data out but I'm certain they where also stored as bitmap images. In any case, the iris scanners most certainly sent images to us and not hashes. Why send an image if all you need is a hash?
In any case nobody outside can tell what some crypto scam is doing with those scans and I sure wouldn't trust them.