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TL;DR

• The internet wasn’t built to distinguish humans from bots. But soon that missing trust layer will become existential.

• World is building that layer: a full-stack protocol for verifying humanity at scale, starting with custom biometric hardware (the Orb) and expanding into a privacy-preserving identity system (World ID), a global wallet (World App), a human-first L2 (World Chain), and an app ecosystem (Mini Apps) designed to reward real usage.

• With over 12.5 million verified users, World is already the largest decentralized identity network. And its goal is 1 billion users by 2027.

• World ID unlocks sybil-resistant logins, DAO votes, payments, airdrops, and more, but the real promise lies in mainstream integrations: Tinder (Match Group), Razer, and Visa have already begun adopting World ID.

• WLD, the network’s native token, has aggressive emissions and unlocks, but represents a contrarian long-term bet on the value of verified digital identity. We present our case in detail here.

Recently, I was re-watching one of my favorite shows, Archer, the animated spy comedy famous for its quick wit and emotionally stunted characters. In the Season 7 finale, something stuck with me.

There’s this moment where a humanoid clone of the lead character, Sterling Archer, shows up, and it’s indistinguishable from the real one.

Same voice, same ego, same taste for danger and bad decisions. Even his own mother can’t tell which one is her actual son.

The humanoid is so perfectly Archer that no one knows who’s real anymore. It was actually quite hilarious.

Guess what? We’re grappling with something just as uncanny: the rise of digital AI personas that are getting harder to distinguish from real people.

Just take a look at the recent launch of Google’s Veo 3.

With just a text prompt, you can now generate photorealistic videos with natural motion, lifelike lighting, and voiceovers that sound uncannily human.

This isn’t research lab stuff. It’s available now.

So while Archer played it for laughs, the real-world version of that problem is already unfolding on our screens, in our wallets, and across our social feeds.

AI systems can now argue, flirt, scam, and scheme. Deepfakes spoof your closest friends to scam you. Bots harvest airdrops, flood Discord servers, and manipulate sentiment online. We’ve moved past content generation. We’re in the era of identity simulation.

The uncomfortable part is how easily it slips in. The internet still runs on a quiet assumption: that whoever you’re talking to is human.

This assumption will soon be broken.

And once it does, so does everything built on top of it. Online voting becomes a joke. Sybil attacks ruin token distributions. Public goods get drained by fakes. Trust, which is already scarce online, becomes a luxury.

So what comes next?

We need a new foundational primitive— proof of personhood. The ability to reliably, privately, and globally prove that you are a unique, living human being, without needing to tie yourself to a name or government ID.

That’s where World comes in.

Enter World (formerly Worldcoin)

If you’ve spent any time around crypto or AI, you’ve probably heard of Worldcoin—often accompanied by a snarky tweet about eyeball scans or Sam Altman’s supposed descent into sci-fi villainy.

But beyond the noise, World is a serious attempt to solve a hard problem: how to create proof of personhood as a public good.

Not a bolt-on feature or a middleware layer, but a foundational primitive. A base protocol for an internet where “I am a real human” matters more than “I control this wallet.”

World was founded in 2020 by Sam Altman and Alex Blania. It doesn’t look like a typical crypto startup. What they’ve built is more akin to a sovereign infrastructure stack with custom hardware, custom biometric verification, a new L2 chain, and a privacy-preserving identity system, all focused on a single question:

How can you prove that someone is a unique, living human on a global scale without sacrificing their privacy?

The World Stack

• World ID: A privacy-preserving, zero-knowledge proof-based credential that verifies someone has been biometrically authenticated

• World App: A self-custodial crypto wallet that holds your World ID, allows you to claim WLD tokens, and interact with a growing library of “Mini Apps.”

• WLD Token: The native token issued to verified users

• World Chain: A human-first L2 blockchain built on the OP Stack, where verified humans are prioritized over bots.

Together, these components make up what World calls the Real Human Network, a system where humans are verified and economically rewarded, and where bots are structurally deprioritized.

#1— The Orb: Proof of Personhood Inside a Chrome Ball

One of the most fundamental (and a bit controversial…) ways World is reimagining digital identity is through the Orb.

Yes, that Orb. The shiny chrome bowling ball-looking device that’s been meme’d to death on X, compared to surveillance devices in dystopian sci-fi, and called everything from a biometric breakthrough to a marketing disaster.

Inside, however, is a very advanced biometric imaging system built to scan your iris and generate a unique mathematical representation of your identity, an iris code, that serves as your World ID credential.

So…why build a literal eyeball scanner?

World didn’t start out trying to manufacture hardware. In fact, the founding team reportedly explored every other possible method of proving personhood at scale:

• Facial recognition: Too easy to spoof with printed photos, replay attacks, or 3D masks. And now, thanks to generative AI, deepfakes can trick most commercial systems. Worse still, accuracy drops dramatically across various skin tones, genders, and lighting conditions.

• Government-issued IDs: According to World Bank, close to a billion people worldwide lack formal ID access. Using them introduces heavy privacy tradeoffs and dependence on centralized state actors. Not ideal for a global, neutral identity layer.

• Social graph attestations: While elegant in theory, these systems require users to be vouched for by people already in the network, creating a cold-start problem. They’re also gameable: a few colluding actors can create webs of fake users.

• CAPTCHA-style Turing tests: Once a gold standard, now basically obsolete. AI can solve image and logic puzzles more quickly and reliably than humans.

The Orb wasn’t plan A, but was the answer when every other plan failed.

Why Irises?

Among all biometric modalities, the iris stands out.

It offers the highest entropy (uniqueness) of any visible feature, doesn’t degrade over time, and can be measured quickly with minimal intrusion. Fingerprints wear down. Faces change. Voice is noisy.

But irises are practically built for 1:N matching at a planetary scale.

Overall, the Orb was a well-thought-out engineering decision: if you want to build a global proof-of-personhood system that’s fraud-resistant, inclusive, and scalable, you ultimately need something like the Orb.

Looking Inside The Orb

The Orb is a fully optimized compute unit designed for privacy and biometric integrity. A quick teardown reveals an impressive stack:

• Multispectral imaging using visible and near-infrared sensors for spoof detection and precise biometric capture

• Telephoto lens on a gimbal, with millimeter-level alignment for accurate iris targeting

• Neural networks running on-device, handling autofocus, liveness detection, and gaze tracking in real-time

• Encrypted SSD + secure element, ensuring tamper resistance and on-device storage of temporary biometric data

• NVIDIA Jetson Xavier NX, the same AI module used in autonomous robotics, powers all compute locally

  

  Source: World.org Blog

No data is sent to the cloud. In fact, no iris image is even retained by default.

After the Orb captures your iris, it immediately converts the image into an iris code, which is a compact, irreversible mathematical representation. Once that code is generated and checked for uniqueness, the raw image is permanently deleted from the device.

Users are then given a choice:

• They can either store their World ID credentials locally on their device (default), or

• Opt into a backup system to prevent loss in case they lose their phone.

Those who opt in do so under a model called Personal Custody. The backup is encrypted end-to-end, and the keys never leave the user’s device. No one, not World, can access or decrypt it. It’s a recovery option without surveillance risk.

Still, it’s fair to ask: how do we know the Orb actually deletes the image?

While the system isn’t fully trustless yet, World has open-sourced major parts of the Orb’s firmware, published hardware specs, and committed to independent audits. All processing occurs locally on-device (on an NVIDIA Jetson module) with no data sent to a central server. The architecture is designed to minimize trust, and over time, the goal is to make even the hardware verifiable.

It’s not perfect. But compared to how most biometric systems operate today, it’s a major leap forward in user privacy and control.

Dystopia or Inclusion?

Now, let’s address the elephant in the room.

It’s easy to see why people recoil. A glowing metal sphere that scans your iris to prove you’re human sounds more like a Black Mirror prop than a tool for digital inclusion. And the comparisons to Orwell aren’t subtle.

But it’s worth pausing before calling for “dystopia”.

Facial recognition is already everywhere. Airports, border crossings, phones, stadiums. Most of us have already handed our biometric data to Apple, Google, or a dozen apps we forgot we installed.

The difference with World is the intent.

World is not harvesting data to sell ads. It’s not tying your scan to your passport or name. It’s trying to create a privacy-preserving passport to digital life, available to anyone, regardless of where they’re born or what documents they have.

And whether that future feels utopian or dystopian won’t be decided by the Orb itself, but it’ll depend on what kind of power structures we build on top of the identity it enables.

Under the Hood: How World ID Works

So the Orb scans your irises. You hold still, the machine does its magic, and a few seconds later, you’re handed something that’s...not a passport, not a login, not even an NFT.

What you get is your World ID on the World App, a cryptographic credential that confirms: “This wallet belongs to a real, verified human.”

Without any name, birthdate, or photo. Just a mathematically unique badge of humanness.

But the idea isn’t just that World ID proves you’re human, but it lets you prove that again and again, across apps and contexts, without revealing who you are, or what else you’ve done.

That’s the actual innovation here. It’s privacy-preserving sybil resistance, designed for an internet where identity is fractured.

Let’s break down how that’s possible.

Step 1: Are You Unique?

After the Orb captures your iris, it generates the iris code. But to make sure you're not already in the system, that code needs to be compared against all others without exposing your actual data.

This is where Anonymized Multi-Party Computation (AMPC) comes in.

AMPC is a cryptographic technique that allows multiple independent parties to perform a computation without any of them having access to the underlying data. In World’s case, it’s used to check that your iris code is unique without revealing what your code actually is.

The image below shows how AMPC splits the verification process across different servers or parties. Each one holds only an encrypted “shard” of your data, so even if one node is compromised, your privacy remains intact.

This setup solves one of the hardest problems in biometric identity: how do you deduplicate identities without creating a surveillance honeypot?

AMPC’s answer: never let anyone see the full data, not even the system itself. It’s a good example of how World is using cryptography to redesign trust.

Step Two: Prove You’re Human (Without Revealing Who)

Once you’ve been verified, your World ID lives locally on your device. But what happens when you want to use it?

Say you want to vote in a DAO, access a gated app, or claim an airdrop. You need to prove you’re a verified human, but you probably don’t want that action tied back to your wallet or name.

That’s where Semaphore comes in, a zero-knowledge protocol that lets you prove you belong to a group (e.g., verified humans) without revealing which member you are.

It’s like flashing a gym card that proves you're a member but not revealing your name, location, or visit history.

One-Time Proofs, Not Lifetime Trails

To prevent abuse (like claiming the same airdrop twice), World ID uses nullifiers, which are cryptographic tokens that prove an action has already been taken, without linking it to anything else.

Each nullifier is context-specific. So if you use World ID to vote in one election, that action can't be correlated with a different vote, a different app, or even the same app on a different day.

It’s not only anonymity but also unlinkability which is a crucial concept in modern privacy.

Why This Matters

When you combine biometric uniqueness with zero-knowledge privacy, you get something that didn’t really exist before: a human-verification layer that doesn’t compromise identity.

This unlocks things like:

• One-person-one-vote governance: whether in DAOs or real-world elections

• Spam-resistant messaging and social apps: where verified accounts get priority or exclusive access

• Sybil-proof airdrops and quadratic funding: so real humans benefit from public goods

• Identity filters for agents: letting you opt into digital interactions that only involve verified people

But the big unlock is what comes next: a new generation of apps that can assume humanity without needing to collect identity. World ID becomes the trust layer for pseudonymous, sovereign interactions in a world increasingly saturated with bot-driven manipulation.

#2— Scaling the Human Network

Now that there’s a way to verify humanness securely and privately, the next question is: how do you actually get humans into the system?

And this is where World shifts from cryptography to logistics. Verifying billions of humans requires lots of boots on the ground.

The Orb Operator Model

To scale globally, World partners with Orb Operators: local entrepreneurs and organizations who deploy and run these devices in high-footfall areas like malls, metro stations, campuses, and public events.

Operators earn WLD tokens for each successful verification, creating a self-reinforcing loop: the more users they onboard, the more they earn, and the more valuable the network becomes.

The onboarding process is accessible but includes a thorough review: applicants submit a form, go through interviews and training, and if accepted, receive an Orb to begin verifying users and earning rewards.

As of May 2025, Orbs for new Operators are still in production, with shipping expected to begin later this year. The exact price of an Orb is not disclosed yet but pre-orders are open, requiring a $100 deposit to reserve a unit. Once delivered, Operators can either rent or purchase the device, and then begin earning WLD on a per-scan basis.

To allocate Orbs fairly and efficiently, World runs a bidding mechanism where Operators compete based on factors like expected foot traffic, fraud prevention capability, and historical performance. High-performing Operators are prioritized for expansion.

Overall, it’s a decentralized, incentive-driven rollout of identity infrastructure where local players drive global adoption.

Orb Stores

World has also launched Orb Stores, which are Apple Store-style locations where users can get verified, ask questions, and learn about World ID in person.

These storefronts serve as onboarding stations, privacy education centers, and regional Operator hubs. They’re already live or planned in cities like Miami, LA, Berlin, Nairobi, and Buenos Aires.

The World App: Identity, Wallet, On-Ramp

Once a user verifies their humanity through the Orb, their entry point into the World ecosystem is World App, a lightweight, self-custodial mobile wallet built to be radically accessible. It also holds the user’s World ID.

At just ~18MB, it can run on 10+ year-old Android phones, supports dozens of languages, and is designed not for crypto power users but for everyone else. This is where users claim their WLD, hold and swap assets, and most importantly, interact with the verified internet via their World ID.

It’s where World’s demand-side engine is quietly taking shape.

Mini Apps: Turning Verified Identity Into On-Chain Demand

If Orbs, Operators, and WLD incentives make up the supply side of World, then Mini Apps are its demand layer.

These are lightweight applications embedded directly into the World App, designed for human-first UX with built-in support for sybil resistance, identity gating, and WLD-based incentives.

Since opening up the Mini App SDK in October 2024, World has seen a growing wave of developers building:

• Daily reward loops (like ORO, ORB, Eggs Vault)

• Identity-native financial tools (EarnOS, DNA, CashPay)

• Experimental games and social apps that would break under sybil attacks on any other chain

Each Mini App comes with three powerful primitives:

• World ID to ensure every user is real and unique

• $WLD to handle payments, incentives, and economic flows

• Gasless execution via smart wallets on World Chain

And because those primitives are baked into the platform, developers don’t have to build anti-sybil infrastructure themselves. They just plug into a network that already filters for verified humans.

Not every Mini App is human-gated, and that’s by design. The World App Store supports both types of apps:

• Human-only apps that require World ID to use

• Open apps that anyone with the app can access

This flexibility allows developers to choose when sybil resistance is critical and when it’s not.

Some mini apps that are benefiting enormously from verified identity include:

• Polls: Real-time sentiment data is only useful if the inputs come from actual people.

• Credit: This mini-app offers instant, no-collateral borrowing, where repayment behavior builds your on-chain credit profile. A sybil-resistant base ensures that users can’t farm loans or game reputations.

• WorldGuard: A tool that allows users to create human-only Telegram groups, filtering out bots and spam

Others, like Kalshi’s upcoming prediction market, will benefit from a mix of open access for visibility, but verified participation for credibility and integrity. When real money or reputation is on the line, human-only logic becomes a feature, not a restriction.

Most developers in Web3 today are stuck optimizing for fake metrics: inflated DAUs, wash volume. In contrast, World App offers something rare: a chance to reach millions of real, unique users who are already verified and actively engaged.

Real Metrics, Real Usage

As of April 2025:

• Mini App usage now accounts for 65%+ of all World App transactions

• Weekly transaction throughput has topped 8 million, with a meaningful share driven by habitual, verified users

• Top apps like ORO, UNO, ORB, and Eggs Vault are seeing 100K–400K+ weekly active users

• World App has surpassed 10 million downloads, with 2M+ daily active users (DAU) and ~7–8 transactions per second, making it one of the most-used self-custodial wallets globally

To kickstart its ecosystem, World launched a $1 million retroactive funding round for Mini App developers. If people actually use what you build, you get paid.

And because World Chain is part of the OP Stack, developers are also eligible for Optimism RetroPGF. The result is a rare dual-incentive flywheel: build for real humans, and you get both usage and funding.

#3— World Chain: Blockchain For Humans

World has millions of verified users. But to support real human activity at scale, it needs more than an ID layer. It needs a chain that’s built for humans.

Most blockchains are identity-blind. They don’t care who’s transacting but only that gas is paid. But it breaks down when you’re coordinating people.

That’s why World launched World Chain, a human-first, AI-aware Layer 2 where verified users come first by default.

Built on the OP Stack

World Chain is built using Optimism’s modular OP Stack, a smart choice from a tech and ecosystem standpoint. It inherits Ethereum security, leverages a well-supported rollup framework, and stays interoperable with the rest of the Superchain.

But Worldcoin is making key changes under the hood that tilt the game board in favor of humans:

1. Priority Blockspace for Humans (PBH)

Using World ID, verified users are granted top-of-block access. This means their transactions are processed before others, and potentially at lower fees. It’s a direct protocol-level defense against:

• MEV front-running bots

• Transaction spam

• Gas auction wars that price out smaller users

It’s one of the first real attempts to create identity-based Quality of Service (QoS) at the blockchain layer, something that might become critical as AI agents start flooding blockspace.

2. Gas Abstraction and Smart Wallets

Every World App user gets a smart contract wallet by default (using Safe), with support for meta-transactions. This allows:

• Gasless interactions for verified users, where fees can be subsidized by the protocol

• Better UX for non-crypto-native users (no need to manage keys or sign raw transactions)

• A path toward programmable wallet-level behavior tied to World ID status

In short: the chain doesn’t just know you’re human. It can respond accordingly.

3. Sybil-Resistant Protocol Logic

Because World Chain can verify that a wallet = a person, protocols can enforce identity-based rules without off-chain checks.

It’s a design unlock for building human-aware applications at the smart contract level.

Team and Fundraising

It would be foolish to verify the humanness of a billion people without a world-class team or serious financial backing. Thankfully, World has both.

World was co-founded by:

• Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI and former president of Y Combinator. His involvement gave the project immediate global visibility and a double dose of hype and scrutiny.

• Alex Blania, a physicist-turned-protocol architect who now leads Tools for Humanity (TFH), the company driving product, engineering, and Orb deployment.

• Max Novendstern, an early co-founder who helped shape the UBI-infused origin of the project before departing in 2021.

The core team spans cryptographers, hardware engineers, and product leads across Berlin and San Francisco. Tiago Sada (Head of Product) and Remco Bloemen (ex-Ethereum researcher, now leading protocol and infra) round out a group that operates more like a lab than a traditional crypto company.

Fundraising and Strategic Capital

Worldcoin has raised over $250 million to date, including rounds backed by:

• a16z crypto

• Bain Capital Crypto

• Khosla Ventures

• Blockchain Capital

• Tiger Global

• Coinbase Ventures

• Plus, newer participants like Selini Capital, Mirana Ventures, and Arctic Digital

And most recently, in May 2025, World raised $135 million by selling WLD at market price to a16z and Bain, two of its earliest and highest-conviction backers.

The key thing to note is that this was not a discounted token round. It was a direct purchase of circulating WLD at public market prices. This round stands out as a rare signal of conviction. They were betting on WLD’s long-term utility.

The funding is earmarked for expanding the Orb network, particularly in the U.S. and other regulated markets.

Our WLD Investment Thesis

There’s being early, and there’s being wrong. Sometimes they look almost… identical.

WLD sits at that uncomfortable intersection.

On one hand, it’s a solid bet on a global, privacy-preserving identity protocol. An idea will become essential as AI agents overwhelm the internet.

On the other hand, it’s a token with emissions that would make even the most inflationary DeFi project blush.

And so WLD currently trades like a rotating altcoin, not a call option on internet infrastructure. That mispricing creates an opening. If WLD’s utility inflects before supply overwhelms demand, the upside is asymmetric.

World has assembled the largest verified human identity graph in crypto. Over 26 million sign-ups. Hardware (Orbs) and software (World App) deployed across dozens of countries. Around 12.5 million unique individuals verified so far. That’s more than any other project in this space, but still just 0.15 percent of the global population.

The target: everyone. Eight billion humans.

Three things make us believe it’s time to start paying attention 👇