Worldcoin Blockchain Development

The idea for Worldcoin belongs to Sam Altman, the co-founder and CEO of OpenAI, the company that developed the famous AI-powered chatbot ChatGPT. In the new crypto project, its founder and other developers (Max Novendstern and Alex Blania) offered the world a new way to identify users — by scanning the retina, after which the user receives WLD project tokens.

The goal of the developers and the project itself is to create a user base without disclosing their personal data. This, according to Altman, should confirm the «humanity» of people against the backdrop of the increasingly active introduction of artificial intelligence (AI) into people’s lives.

Altman believed that this approach would increase the efficiency of using cryptocurrency among people around the world, eliminating the centralization inherent in most existing projects.

In the long term, he saw this as a way to build a fair system for distributing income obtained from artificial intelligence and automation through a universal basic income (UBI).

However, the issues of identity verification, human authenticity, and distinguishing humans from bots in the context of AI’s growing capabilities and cryptocurrencies’ anonymous nature were still open.

In this regard, Worldcoin developed the concept of “Proof of Personhood” and a verification system based on biometric data to accurately verify any person in the world whose data is in the system.

An Orb device — a reflective metal ball that records information about the user’s iris in a complex cryptographic code—scans the retina.

Everyone who has passed digital identification will periodically be given rewards in WLD tokens. In the first months after the project’s launch, the global Worldcoin platform was replenished with data from 2 million people. All of them (except for US citizens) received 25 coins.

Since May 2021, the Worldcoin platform has been operating in test mode, improving its technologies and accumulating a user base. The project’s public launch and the listing of the WLD token took place on July 24, 2023. By this time, Worldcoin had already issued 2 million World IDs.

In terms of blockchain technology, Worldcoin works thanks to Ethereum and Optimism (smart contracts that perform automatic identity verification), as well as Polygon (used to store a registry with the IDs of all users).

Project Features

If we talk about the project features, a rather unusual scheme for registering in Worldcoin is worth noting. So, to participate in the project, users must first obtain their World ID, allowing them to apply for the release of WLD coins. To do this, they must follow these steps:

• Installing the World App mobile application. Verifying an email or phone number (optional).
• The application generates a private key. Based on this key, a “personality commitment” is created—proof of the public key, safe for exchange but not revealing the key itself.
• The user presents their identity commitment to the nearest Orbs device using a QR code (a reference to the story about queues in different cities from the beginning of the article). Orbs scans the user’s eyes (iris) to confirm its uniqueness. The Orbs device processes, hashes, and signs the scan, which is then sent to the Worldcoin servers to verify its uniqueness.
• Once verified, the identity commitment is written into a Merkle tree and stored on the Ethereum and Optimism blockchains.
• The World App generates a unique World ID, which the user can use to receive 25 WLD coins as a reward.

Several key elements make this model secure:

• Biometric data is not linked to the user’s personal data; phone numbers and emails are optional.
• The user’s public key is not revealed through the identity pledge.
• When using World ID for verification, a ZK proof is provided, not the identity pledge itself.

It is important to note that Orbs devices can read facial features and body temperature to verify that a real person is in front of them. This data is not stored. In the case of a retina scan, the image is deleted unless the user permits it to be stored.

Despite its unique approach, Worldcoin has faced criticism for violating user rights and local laws in some countries during testing. The project has received much support in third-world countries. Still, authorities in the United States, Germany, Kenya, Spain, and Portugal have spoken out against the large-scale collection of their citizens’ data.

Why the project is needed

Worldcoin is primarily aimed at solving the key problem of the digital world today—identifying real people among bots with artificial intelligence. And yes, this is a significant problem. Just look it up, and you will understand how much the development of AI helps scammers impersonate real people.

It is essential to understand that the central element of the project is World ID, which, although not a tool for a full-fledged KYC procedure, allows you to confirm the user’s uniqueness and reality without disclosing their personal data.

This means that users can create accounts and authenticate without providing their personal data, making World ID a valuable tool for social networks, non-financial services, governance in Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAO), airdrops, etc.

Funds and investors

In addition to Sam Altman, more than 17 different funds, from Tier 1 to Tier 5, have invested in the project. The most famous are Blockchain Capital, a16z, and Coinbase Ventures.

In addition to large investors, Worldcoin received serious support from CEX exchanges. So, on the fourth day after the project’s official launch, its native token was listed by almost all top centralized exchanges, and users were allowed to stake it.

WLD Tokenomics

The WLD coin, like the project itself, was launched in July 2023. The token was created on the Ethereum blockchain according to the ERC-20 standard. For greater scalability, the developers also placed the asset on the second-level Optimist blockchain, known for its high throughput – more than 200,000 transactions per second are processed here.

Worldcoin (WLD) has a total supply of 10 billion tokens. This amount is distributed between the Worldcoin community, the project developers, and early investors who contributed to the project through Tools For Humanity, which we mentioned above.

The circulating supply refers to the number of WLD tokens already on the market and not subject to any restrictions. At the project’s launch, this number was 105 million tokens, although according to the whitepaper, it was initially planned to be 143 million. This amount includes rewards for users verified before the project launched and tokens provided to market makers to maintain the liquidity of WLD.

The unlocked supply is the sum of the circulating supply and the unlocked tokens, subject to specific sales restrictions. At launch, this supply was 500 million WLD.

According to the whitepaper, this number will increase predictably, given the unlock schedules and the expected growth of the user base.

An essential aspect of Worldcoin tokenomics is that for the first 15 years after launch, the token inflation will be 0%. This means that the total supply of WLD will remain constant.

However, after this period, the community will have the right to vote to increase the inflation rate to a maximum of 1.5% per year if necessary for the project’s sustainable development.

The project team planned to list the coin on crypto exchanges after 1 billion people scanned their retinas. However, from the first days, WLD could be bought on almost all major centralized platforms, particularly Binance, Huobi, Bybit, OKX, etc. The token is also presented on some DEX platforms, such as Uniswap.

WLD, like any other crypto asset, is very volatile. Its rate is influenced by news about the token or project itself and the general situation in the digital asset market. For example, after it became known that Worldcoin launched a grant program for developers and that in February, the number of active users of the project exceeded one million, the coin’s value began to grow.

However, the news that the Kenyan authorities suspended the project in August 2023 negatively affected the rate of the asset—it fell by 51%. If the developers manage to carry out their large-scale payments and scan more than 2 billion people, then the value of the Worldcoin cryptocurrency may grow significantly. However, whether the project team can fulfill its plans is still unclear.

Conclusion

Worldcoin is a revolutionary project that aims to provide reliable identity verification in a digital environment where algorithms and bots can make identification difficult. Using blockchain, physical devices, and ZKP, the project team has created a platform that ensures the safety of users’ personal data while simultaneously confirming their uniqueness using biometrics.

Interestingly, the crypto community’s attention seems to be more focused on the successful launch of the WLD token and the presence of famous personalities like Sam Altman among the founders rather than on the World ID technology itself. The great interest in Orbs is likely due to the free distribution of 25 WLD to anyone who wants it.

The crypto project has ambitious plans, but because some countries’ authorities are interfering with its implementation, the project may slow down, which will likely negatively affect the value of the native WLD token. However, today, one thing can be said with certainty—it will be interesting to watch the development of Worldcoin and its impact on the digital identity and cryptocurrency industry in the future.