Worldcoin, recently renamed World — the crypto-powered, eyeball-scanning identity platform co-founded by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman — launched the mainnet for its own Ethereum layer-2 network called World Chain on Thursday.
World Chain is being rolled out with the aim of bringing millions of verifiable human users onto the blockchain, in addition to promoting the development of digital identity tools and applications that promote financial freedom, the core team told Declutter.
Many blockchains are dominated by bots, said World Advisor Liam Horne Declutter. But World Chain hopes to serve the types of users the project thinks will benefit most from blockchain technology: people.
“Many chains have more algorithmic trading bots moving money on chains than there are on chains [there are] people,” said Horne. “World Chain is about expanding the range of use cases [humans]and also building a blockchain in a way that is more designed for them.”
World Chain is part of Optimism’s Superchain, a network of interoperable layer 2s that share security and other infrastructure. As such, it is interoperable with more than two dozen chains, such as Base and Blast, which should help bring in users from across the crypto ecosystem, Horne said. It is also faster and cheaper than Ethereum’s mainnet, with gas subsidies also available to verified human users.
By leveraging Optimism’s open-source development framework, the OP Stack, World Chain also aims to attract a wide range of developers, encouraging the building of real-world decentralized apps on its network. This development will help attract even more people to the blockchain, said Optimism Unlimited Chief Growth Officer Ryan Wyatt Declutter.
“What the Worldcoin team does, what the Base team does, what the Uniswap team does, they all contribute to and advance OP Stack,” said Wyatt. “So it’s the engineering efforts of the best protocol engineers across the industry, across these many teams, that drive development and progress – which benefits World Chain.”
Founded in 2019, Worldcoin made waves when it launched its Orb, a futuristic-looking device that scans users’ irises and links them to a virtual key on the blockchain. People who were scanned were eligible for an allocation of Worldcoin, subject to regional restrictions.
Meet World App 3.0, the super app for people. Now with mini apps. pic.twitter.com/Db8GYXBg4n
– World (@worldcoin) October 17, 2024
World Chain will integrate World ID as standard, allowing users authenticated through the system to access prioritized blockspace. It will also house a global network of on-ramps in more than 150 countries, in addition to several stablecoin markets.
Services that can be used by people locked out of the traditional financial system are exactly what will help drive adoption of the chain, Horne said. Declutter.
“It’s places that really need access to stablecoins for financial access, to move money across borders, just to hedge against local currency inflation… that will use Worldcoin,” Horne said. “These are people who need crypto.”
Edited by Andrew Hayward
