Worldcoin, the project co-founded by Open AI CEO Sam Altman, which uses iris-scanning technology to verify a user’s “humanness,” is planning to launch an Ethereum layer-2 blockchain prioritizing verified humans over bots.
Worldcoin currently has more than 10 million users, with 50% of them having verified their human identities using the project’s Orb.
In a blog announcement on April 17, Worldcoin introduced its new human-centered blockchain called World Chain, which will be built on Optimism’s Superchain.
Worldcoin is the largest protocol on Optimism, an Ethereum Layer-2 scaling solution, accounting for 44% of user transactions on the network, and sometimes over 80% during peak periods.
According to the announcement, the continuous growth of the Worldcoin community caused developers to build an independent chain.
“Migrating to a dedicated network will already yield meaningful gains. After this, World Chain will be on the forefront of scaling and decentralizing the Layer 2 paradigm on Ethereum with the Superchain ecosystem.”
The Worldcoin Foundation aims to prioritize human transactions on the World Chain network, in a sector that is mainly controlled by bots. Automated transactions which account for more than half of user activity on major blockchains often cause network congestion and high gas fees that affect human users.
But with World Chain, Worldcoin seeks to solve this issue by focusing on users who verify their identity using the World ID, which will enable them to get a free gas allowance and “faster confirmation times” over bots.
While gas fees will, in the meantime, be handled by the Worldcoin Foundation, the ultimate goal is to “reach an equilibrium where gas for casual users is ultimately covered by fees from bots and power users.”
Also, Ether (ETH) will serve as the native token for World Chain, but verified users will be able to use Worldcoin (WLD) tokens when they claim their token grants to pay for fees.
The World Chain launch is slated for this summer, while a developer preview is expected to happen soon, according to the announcement.
Worldcoin, however, continues to face regulatory hurdles in different countries, with the issue of possible privacy violations causing concern for data protection regulators.
In March, authorities in Portugal and Spain instructed Worldcoin to halt its biometric data collection for 90 days, while Hong Kong began an investigation into the project in January.
Amid the setbacks, Worldcoin has recorded over 10 million users on the World App – the World ID-compatible crypto wallet app designed by Tools for Humanity (TFH) – in 160 countries, with more than five million having verified World IDs. The wallet app also boasts over 70 million transactions.