What is Worldcoin (WLD)?

Overview

Worldcoin is a digital identity initiative designed to offer a global, inclusive identity and financial network accessible to everyone, regardless of their country of origin, background, or economic status.

History

In October 2021, a new cryptocurrency called Worldcoin was introduced by its co-founders, Alex Blania, Max Novendstern, and OpenAI co-founder, Sam Altman. The trio had previously formed Tools for Humanity (TFH) in 2019, which was responsible for the initial research and development of the Worldcoin project. The original goal of Worldcoin was to airdrop the WLD token to a billion people, to create a global currency that could serve as a Universal Basic Income (UBI). However, one of the main challenges faced by the project was accurately identifying humans as opposed to bots online, which would have made it difficult to distinguish legitimate airdrop recipients.

The Worldcoin team has developed the Orb device to tackle the challenge of verifying human uniqueness without compromising a user’s real identity. This biometric hardware device captures an image of a user’s eyes, which is then converted into a numeric code to create a unique World ID. 

To supplement the Orb device, the team also created the Proof of Personhood (PoP) framework and protocol, which uses an extended version of Ethereum’s zk-solution called Semaphore. By combining both the PoP protocol and the Orb device, human uniqueness can be verified without exposing a user’s real identity. The project team successfully rolled out prototypes of the Orb devices to twelve countries across four continents (Africa, South America, Europe, and Asia) and onboarded the first 25 Orb Operators in October 2021.

In October 31st, 2022, the Worldcoin Foundation was established by TFH, a non-profit organization tasked with overseeing and managing the Worldcoin project towards progressive and eventually community-based governance. According to the project’s whitepaper, the Worldcoin Foundation was granted ownership of the project’s intellectual properties, smart contracts, software development kits, patents for the Orb device design and iris technology, brand assets, domains, and social media accounts. As of January 2023, the Worldcoin project had successfully onboarded more than one million users who were verified by the Orb device protocol.