Worldcoin (WLD), now branded 'World', is a project co-founded by OpenAI's Sam Altman with an unusual goal: proving you're a real, unique human online in an age of AI bots. People verify themselves by having their iris scanned by a device called the 'Orb', which creates a private 'World ID' (using cryptography meant to confirm uniqueness without storing the actual image). Verified users receive WLD tokens, part of a 'universal basic income' idea. The thesis is that as AI makes fake accounts and deepfakes rampant, a trusted 'proof of human' becomes valuable infrastructure. WLD is the token used for incentives and governance across that network.
Where it stands today: World claims tens of millions of app sign-ups across many countries, over fifteen million of them iris-verified, and has struck partnerships with mainstream platforms (Tinder, Zoom, Docusign) to use World ID for verifying real humans. The 'proof of human for the AI era' narrative is its core pitch and ties it to the biggest theme in tech. But it faces intense, ongoing regulatory pushback: multiple countries (including Brazil, Germany, Spain, Kenya, Korea and others) have investigated, restricted or banned the iris-scanning Orb over privacy and biometric-data concerns. So today it's an ambitious, well-funded, high-profile project whose biggest obstacle isn't technology but whether regulators and the public will accept mass iris-scanning at all.