Worldcoin

The Worldcoin project was conceived in 2019 to help every human access the global economy and benefit from the coming age of AI. Tools for Humanity, the technology company that develops the project, was founded the same year by Alex Blania (CEO) and Sam Altman (chairman) and is headquartered in San Francisco, United States, and Munich, Germany; the project’s co-founders also include Max Novendstern. Blania and the early team designed and engineered in Germany the first prototypes of what would become the Orb.⁠[1][2][3][4]

On October 21, 2021, Blania and Altman jointly introduced Worldcoin publicly for the first time: the project planned to let everyone claim a share of a new cryptocurrency for free, which required proving that each claimant is a real human who has not claimed already, and the team built a device called the Orb that captures an image of a person’s eyes and converts it into a short numeric code to check whether the person has signed up before. The project was then running field tests in many locations around the world, with a single device onboarding about 700 people per week on average; the team had about 30 prototype devices operating across four continents (South America, Asia, Africa, and Europe) and planned eventually to produce more than 50,000 devices a year. As originally designed, the Worldcoin token was an Ethereum-based Layer 2 cryptocurrency.⁠[5][5][5][5][6][6][6]

In March 2022, Worldcoin raised $100 million at a $3 billion valuation.⁠[7]

In April 2022, MIT Technology Review published an investigation into Worldcoin’s test-phase sign-up process, based on interviews with more than 35 people in six countries: Indonesia, Kenya, Sudan, Ghana, Chile, and Norway. By that March, Worldcoin had scanned the eyes, faces, and bodies of 450,000 people in 24 countries, 14 of them developing nations and eight in Africa. The investigation found that the project’s representatives used deceptive marketing practices, collected more personal data than the company acknowledged, and failed to obtain meaningful informed consent, practices that may violate the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and local laws.⁠[8][8][8][8]

On March 14, 2023, the project released the World ID protocol and opened early access to its SDK for developers. World ID is a decentralized identity protocol based on zero-knowledge cryptography that lets holders prove they are a unique, real person without sharing personal data such as names or email addresses; at launch it supported phone number verification and Orb iris verification.⁠[9][9][9][9]

On May 8, 2023, Tools for Humanity launched the World App wallet, combining World ID, claiming of Worldcoin grants, and stablecoin deposits and transfers starting with Circle’s USDC. That month, Tools for Humanity closed a $115 million Series C led by Blockchain Capital, with participation from a16zAndreessen HorowitzAndreessen Horowitz (a16z) is a venture capital firm founded in 2009 by Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz. It invests from the seed stage through the growth stage and provides operational support to its portfolio companies.Open the full entry, Bain Capital Crypto, and Distributed Global; the project was then in beta and had onboarded about two million users across five continents.⁠[10][10][10][7][7][7]

On July 24, 2023, the Worldcoin Foundation announced that the project was live, released the World ID SDK, and announced plans to scale Orb operations to more than 35 cities in more than 20 countries. The same day, the foundation’s subsidiary World Assets Ltd. minted and released the Worldcoin token (WLD), with a total supply of 10 billion, to the millions of eligible people who had participated in the beta. WLD was not intended to be available to U.S. residents or those in certain other restricted territories; in their launch letter, Blania and Altman said they hoped that where the rules are less clear, such as in the United States, steps would be taken so more people could benefit.⁠[3][3][3][11][3][12]

At launch, the project consisted of three parts: World ID as a digital identity, the WLD token distributed free to unique humans where laws allow, and World App, developed and operated by Tools for Humanity. Blania said that in the age of AI the need for proof of personhood is no longer a topic of serious debate, and that the critical question is whether available solutions can be privacy-first, decentralized, and maximally inclusive.⁠[3][3][3][3]

After launch, Kenya became one of the project’s biggest markets for sign-ups, with thousands of people at one point lining up outside the Kenyatta International Convention Centre in Nairobi to have their irises scanned. On August 2, 2023, Kenya’s Ministry of the Interior issued a decree suspending Worldcoin enrollment in the country; Cabinet Secretary Kithure Kindiki said security, financial services, and data protection agencies had begun inquiries to establish the authenticity and legality of its activities, the safety of the data collected, and how the collectors intended to use the data. The Worldcoin Foundation described it as a pause that would allow it to improve its onboarding processes and engage with Kenyan officials.⁠[13][13][13][13][13][13]

In early March 2024, Spain’s data protection authority (AEPD) invoked the GDPR’s urgency procedure to order Tools for Humanity to suspend Worldcoin’s operations in Spain for up to three months, citing the sensitivity of biometric data and complaints involving minors. Tools for Humanity argued that the AEPD had bypassed its lead supervisory authority, the Bavarian State Office for Data Protection Supervision (BayLDA), and sought an injunction; on March 11, a Madrid-based High Court rejected the request, saying the safeguarding of the public interest must be prioritized. In June 2024, Tools for Humanity said it was voluntarily extending the pause of Orb operations in Spain until the end of 2024, or until the BayLDA’s consultation with other EU data protection authorities concluded.⁠[14][14][14][14][14][15]

On March 25, 2024, Portugal’s data protection authority (CNPD) ordered the Worldcoin Foundation to suspend, within 24 hours and for 90 days, the collection of iris, eye, and face biometric data in Portugal. The CNPD said it had received dozens of complaints in the previous month concerning the collection of minors’ data without parental authorization, insufficient information given to data subjects, and the impossibility of erasing data or withdrawing consent, and that more than 300,000 people in Portugal had already provided biometric data.⁠[16][16][16][16][16][16]

On April 17, 2024, the project previewed World Chain, a blockchain designed for humans. More than 10 million people in 160 countries had by then created a World ID and a compatible wallet, and Worldcoin user transactions represented about 44% of activity on OP Mainnet, making it the largest application on that network. World Chain would let users anonymously verify their addresses with World ID, with verified humans’ transactions receiving priority confirmation and an allowance of free gas; ETH would remain the native token, and fees could also be paid in WLD.⁠[17][17][17][17]

On May 30, 2024, Worldcoin launched in Colombia, where 1,000 people had their irises scanned within 36 hours. The next day, Colombia’s personal data regulator, the Superintendency of Industry and Commerce (SIC), announced an investigation into whether it complied with Colombian regulations, saying the company had not proven that iris scanning does not entail the collection of sensitive data; the company could keep operating while the investigation proceeded.⁠[18][18][18][18]

On September 25, 2024, South Korea’s Personal Information Protection Commission (PIPC) fined the Worldcoin Foundation and Tools for Humanity 1.1 billion Korean won (about $829,000) for violating the Personal Information Protection Act and issued corrective orders and improvement recommendations. The PIPC found that about 100,000 South Koreans had downloaded the Worldcoin app and nearly 30,000 had used iris authentication; that the company did not inform users of the purpose of collection and the retention period of iris data or that the data would be transferred abroad; that it had no procedure for deleting sensitive data; and that it lacked age verification to prevent children under 14 from registering. Tools for Humanity chief privacy officer Damien Kieran welcomed the findings, calling them the result of months of constructive dialogue.⁠[19][19][19][19][19][19][19][19][19]

On October 17, 2024, at the “A New World” event in San Francisco, Blania and Altman announced that as the project grew, the name “Worldcoin” no longer encapsulated its mission, and that it would become World Network (World for short), built on three pillars: World Chain, World ID, and Worldcoin. Ahead of the event, the project had about 7 million verified humans.⁠[20][20][21]

Also announced that day were a next-generation Orb powered by an NVIDIA Jetson chipset, with nearly five times the AI performance of the previous version and 30% fewer parts; new ways to verify, including flagship locations, on-demand Orbs, and self-serve Orbs that require no operator; World ID 3.0, which lets holders use NFC-enabled passports to prove age and nationality; and World App 3.0, which supports third-party Mini Apps. World Chain mainnet went live the same day, with about 15 million World ID holders and World App users migrated or migrating to the chain, and day-one support from Optimism, Alchemy, Uniswap, Safe, Dune, Etherscan, and others.⁠[20][20][22][22][22][20][20][23][23]

On December 19, 2024, the Bavarian State Office for Data Protection Supervision (BayLDA), Worldcoin’s lead supervisory authority for GDPR compliance in the EU, concluded an investigation it had opened in April 2023 by issuing an initial corrective order: the company must provide a GDPR-compliant deletion procedure within one month of the decision taking effect, obtain explicit consent for certain processing steps in the future, and delete certain data records previously collected without a sufficient legal basis. The decision was coordinated with all the European data protection authorities concerned and applies throughout Europe; whether to open administrative offense proceedings was reserved for a separate proceeding. The company said it would appeal, and the BayLDA said enforcement timelines were suspended pending the appeal.⁠[15][24][24][24][24][24][24][24][25]

Tools for Humanity chief privacy officer Damien Kieran said that, to prevent people suspended by a platform from deleting their World ID and signing up again, the underlying data had to be anonymized in a way that means it cannot be deleted, and that World ID holders can always delete their personal data, which resides solely on their phones.⁠[25][25][25]

World had operated in Brazil since November 2024 and had been in contact with Brazil’s National Data Protection Authority (ANPD) since before then. After the ANPD issued an order against it, World filed an appeal; on February 11, World announced that, to comply with the ANPD’s order, it was voluntarily and temporarily pausing verification services in Brazil. On August 6, 2025, World said it disagreed with the ANPD’s interpretation and would seek further legal redress, maintained that its referral program was in line with Brazil’s data protection law (LGPD), and said it would continue offering the service in Brazil at select locations on a limited basis.⁠[26][26][26][26][26][26]

On February 11, 2025, World launched in Jakarta, the capital of Indonesia; the network then had more than 23 million participants, including 11 million verified humans, and Indonesians who verified at an Orb could claim a total of 42 WLD monthly over a year. On May 4, 2025, Indonesia’s Ministry of Communication and Digital suspended the operating permits of Worldcoin and World ID following public complaints and summoned the local operators PT Terang Bulan Abadi and PT Sandina Abadi Nusantara to explain; a preliminary probe found that PT Terang Bulan Abadi was not registered as an electronic system operator and that the registration for the Worldcoin service was under the name of another company.⁠[27][27][27][28][28][28][28][28]

On April 30, 2025, at its “At Last” event in San Francisco, World announced its U.S. launch: Americans could verify their World ID at World Space locations in six cities (Atlanta, Austin, Los Angeles, Miami, Nashville, and San Francisco) and at Razer stores, and claim WLD (except in New York State and other restricted territories). Tools for Humanity also announced a Visa debit card that converts WLD to fiat at checkout, World ID integrations with Stripe, Match GroupMatch GroupMatch Group is a U.S. publicly traded online-dating company whose brands include Tinder, Hinge, Match and OkCupid. It developed from IAC’s dating businesses and completed its separation in 2020. Subscriptions and à-la-carte purchases are its principal revenue sources; its shares trade on Nasdaq under MTCH.Open the full entry’s Tinder, and Razer, and teased a smartphone-like “Orb Mini.” Altman said World’s Orbs and cryptocurrency are meant to solve for trust in the age of AGI. On May 1, World opened its first U.S. flagship in San Francisco’s Union Square.⁠[29][30][29][30][30][30][30][30][31]

In May 2025, Kenya’s High Court ordered Worldcoin to delete, under the supervision of the Office of the Data Protection Commissioner (ODPC), the biometric data of Kenyans it had unlawfully collected with its Orb in 2023, and barred it from further processing such data without an adequate Data Protection Impact Assessment or valid consent. The ODPC had argued in court that the processing did not adhere to the data protection principles in section 25 of Kenya’s Data Protection Act. In January 2026, the ODPC issued a public notice confirming that Tools for Humanity had deleted all biometric data previously collected from Kenyan citizens.⁠[32][32][32][32][32][33][33]

On June 9, 2025, during London Tech Week, World announced its UK launch, offering Orb verification at several London locations from June 12 and planning to expand to Manchester, Birmingham, Cardiff, Belfast, and Glasgow. On June 26, World Chain mainnet activated Priority Blockspace for Humans (PBH), which reserves space at the top of each block for Orb-verified users so that their transactions are included with priority and without priority fees even during congestion; the mechanism was developed by Tools for Humanity with Flashbots and is fully open source.⁠[34][34][34][35][35][35][35][35]

In July 2025, World paused its iris-scanning operations in Germany after organized groups in Berlin paid refugees and unhoused people cash to scan their eyes at different scanning stations in exchange for the WLD rewards earned by scanning.⁠[36]

On October 2, 2025, the World Foundation published the full hardware design and documentation of the next-generation Orb, covering its internal architecture and its optical, power, security, and mechanical design.⁠[37][37]

World launched in the Philippines in February 2025. In early October 2025, the Philippines’ National Privacy Commission (NPC), citing alleged violations of the Data Privacy Act of 2012, issued an ex parte cease-and-desist order against Tools for Humanity, requiring it to stop all activities connected with World App and Orb biometric verification, removing World App from download in the Philippines, and barring any further collection, transfer, or disclosure of personal or biometric data already gathered. World said it had complied with all applicable Philippine laws before launch and had formally registered with the NPC.⁠[38][39][39][39][39][39][38]

On October 3, 2025, after a seven-month investigation, Colombia’s Superintendency of Industry and Commerce (SIC) ordered the immediate closure of World’s data processing operations in Colombia. World said it disagreed with the decision, called it a preliminary first-instance ruling, said it would appeal, and said it would continue operating in Colombia.⁠[36][36][40]

On December 30, 2025, World published a request for comments on the design of the World ID 4.0 protocol. Since the protocol’s launch in 2023, nearly 18 million people had verified with World ID. The new version turns a World ID from a single long-lived secret into an abstract account in a public registry that can authorize multiple authenticators, rotate keys, and recover if access is lost, while enforcing one-time-use nullifiers to strengthen anonymity.⁠[41][41][41]

On April 17, 2026, at its Lift Off event in San Francisco, World introduced a new World ID protocol with an account-based architecture, along with the World ID app, a dedicated app for managing and using Proof of Human, released first as a public beta. Tinder announced it was expanding its World ID integration to the United States, and World launched Concert Kit, which lets artists reserve tickets for verified humans; Zoom became the first communications platform to integrate World ID directly into its meetings product, and Docusign also adopted Proof of Human; for AI agents, World partnered with Vercel to add “human in the loop” verification to workflows, and Okta planned a related product called Human Principal. The network then had nearly 18 million verified humans in 160 countries.⁠[42][42][42][42][42][42][42][42][42][42]

In May 2026, World opened a flagship at Hofstatt, near Munich’s Marienplatz, where visitors can learn about the project without needing to be verified.⁠[4][4][4]

On June 9, 2026, the World Foundation announced that the project was entering the third of the five phases of its Simple Plan, “Reach critical scale and initial utility.” By then, about 16 million individuals who had verified their World ID had claimed WLD, receiving more than 900 million WLD in total. Phase 3 shifts growth from token incentives to the products and services powered by World ID, such as offering verified users partner benefits like Tinder Boosts.⁠[43][43][43][43][43]

World also announced a narrower operational footprint: in the United States it would focus on San Francisco and New York, and outside the United States on the United Kingdom, Germany, Japan, and South Korea, reducing physical operations outside these focus countries in changes affecting members of its global operational workforce and supporting teams; it aims to have 95% of Orbs operating in a self-serve model by the end of 2026. World ID 4.0 also introduces fees, with the expected model having applications that use World ID pay fees while end users use it for free, and the most immediate revenue opportunity coming from enterprise security.⁠[43][43][43][43][43]

On July 6, 2026, World opened a flagship at 48 Oxford Street in London; the network then had more than 18 million verified humans. On July 24, World marked the third anniversary of its launch.⁠[44][44][45]

On October 18, 2026, at Money20/20 in Las Vegas, World co-founder Blania unveiled World ID for banking and financial institutions, using cryptographic proofs such as Proof of Human, Proof of Presence, and Proof of Attributes to help confirm that real humans are behind transactions, customer requests, and video communications; initial design partners include Bain Capital, OpenExchange, Outtake, Pantera Capital, and VanEck Funds. The same day, World ID for Zoom became available to Zoom’s enterprise customers worldwide through the Zoom Marketplace, and the World ID app, built on World ID 4.0, was available in more than 150 countries. As of October 2026, more than 18 million people held a Proof of Human, which had been presented more than 475 million times.⁠[46][46][46][47][48][48][48][48]

Worldcoin (World) describes itself as an open-source protocol developed and maintained by a global community. Under its user terms, the contracting entities include World Foundation, a Cayman Islands exempted limited-guarantee foundation company; World Assets Limited, a British Virgin Islands company; World Chain LLC, a Cayman Islands limited liability company; and, for European users, World Network (Europe) GmbH in Munich. The World Foundation (formerly the Worldcoin Foundation) acts as steward of the community’s WLD until the protocol is self-sufficient. Tools for Humanity, the project’s main developer, is a technology company of more than 500 people that built the Orb and World App.⁠[49][49][49][49][49][11][2][37][3]

WLD has a total supply of 10 billion tokens. Before launch, 75% was allocated to the World community and 25% to Tools for Humanity’s early investors, the development team, and a small reserve held by Tools for Humanity; the foundation set the aspirational goal of giving at least 60% of WLD to users. As of April 2025, users who verified their World ID at an Orb could claim about 40 WLD monthly over a year, and those who added a passport credential could claim about 20 more, with claim amounts decreasing over time. As of late October 2025, WLD was down more than 92% from its March 2024 all-time high.⁠[11][11][11][11][11][11][36][36]

The Orb confirms that a person is a unique human by photographing their face and eyes. According to World, after verification the images are sent to the user’s phone and permanently deleted from the Orb and are not stored by World, an approach it calls Personal Custody; in May 2025 the multi-party computation used by World ID was upgraded from open-source secure multi-party computation (SMPC) to anonymized multi-party computation (AMPC). The BayLDA, however, regards the data set as not (yet) anonymous and has required the company to demonstrate how it will change its processing structure to meet the deletion requirement.⁠[37][26][40][25]

World: Official website: https://world.org/ (opens in a new window).⁠[50]

Tools for Humanity: Official website: https://www.toolsforhumanity.com/ (opens in a new window).⁠[2]

X: Public account: https://x.com/worldnetwork (opens in a new window)⁠[50]

LinkedInLinkedInLinkedIn is a social networking platform for professionals. It was founded in 2002 by Reid Hoffman and others, launched in 2003, and listed on the New York Stock Exchange in 2011; after Microsoft acquired it for approximately $26.2 billion in 2016, it became a wholly owned Microsoft subsidiary. Its revenue comes from membership subscriptions, advertising, and recruitment solutions.Open the full entry: Public profile: https://www.linkedin.com/company/worldofficial (opens in a new window)⁠[50]

YouTubeYouTubeYouTube is Google’s video-sharing and creator platform, founded in 2005 by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim and acquired by Google in 2006. Built around video uploading, viewing, and creator earnings, the platform has developed Shorts, YouTube Music, Premium, YouTube TV, and products for children, and is headquartered in San Bruno, California, United States.Open the full entry: Public channel: https://www.youtube.com/@worldnetworkofficial (opens in a new window)⁠[50]