Worldcoin (WLD) is the cryptocurrency of World, a project that aims to give every person a digital credential proving they are a real and unique human, issued after a device called the Orb scans their iris. People who verify receive grants of WLD, and the token is also used for governance and fees on the project's own network. The token launched in July 2023, and in October 2024 the project renamed itself from Worldcoin to World, while the token kept the Worldcoin name and WLD ticker.
World is developed by Tools for Humanity, a company co-founded in 2019 by Sam Altman, the chief executive of OpenAI, and Alex Blania, who runs it, and supported by the Worldcoin Foundation. WLD is an ERC-20 token that exists on Ethereum and on World Chain, an Ethereum layer 2 network built with the same software as Optimism (OP). The token is separate from World ID, the identity credential, which can be used without holding any WLD.
Worldcoin in plain terms
Think of the wristband handed out at the gate of a festival. Each visitor gets exactly one after showing up in person, so nobody can sneak in twice under a different name. World tries to do the same for the internet. As artificial intelligence makes fake accounts and bots cheap to create, the project argues that websites and apps will need a simple way to check that they are dealing with a real person, without learning who that person is.
The Orb is the gate. It looks at a person's eyes, which are hard to fake and differ from person to person, and the phone app then holds a digital wristband that can be shown to a website. WLD is the welcome gift for joining and the coin used inside the system. Critics argue that handing out money in exchange for eye scans, especially in poorer countries, is exactly what makes the project troubling.
History
Tools for Humanity announced the project in 2021 and ran a test phase in which people in dozens of countries had their irises scanned. The token went on sale and began trading on 24 July 2023, and regulators in several countries opened inquiries within weeks. In October 2024 the project rebranded as World, presented a redesigned Orb and launched World Chain. By January 2025 it reported more than 10 million verified people. On 30 April 2025 Tools for Humanity unveiled a smaller device, the Orb Mini, and on 1 May 2025 began operating in the United States, starting in six cities, alongside plans for a World-branded Visa card that converts WLD at the point of sale.
How World ID works
The Orb photographs a person's eyes and face, checks that they belong to a living human, and turns the iris pattern into a numerical code that is compared with existing codes to rule out duplicates. World says the original images are sent to the user's phone rather than kept by the company, and that the codes are split and encrypted so that no single party holds them whole. The resulting World ID lives in the World App, a digital wallet, and is presented to apps using zero-knowledge proofs, which confirm that the user is verified without revealing which person they are. This sets it apart from ordinary identity verification, which checks a name and a document.
Supply and uses
WLD's supply is capped at 10 billion tokens over an initial 15 years, with 75 percent set aside for the community and the rest for the team, investors and a company reserve; insider tokens unlock over several years. Its uses include:
- Grants. Verified users can claim WLD periodically, a feature some backers compare to a form of universal basic income, although the amounts are small and not guaranteed.
- Network fees. WLD and other tokens are used on World Chain, where verified humans are given priority for some transactions.
- Governance. Holders are meant to have a say in the protocol's governance, though Tools for Humanity and the foundation still direct its development.
- Trading. WLD is listed on major exchanges and is not available to residents of some places, such as New York state.
Regulation and privacy concerns
Because iris scans are biometric data, World has faced more regulatory action than almost any other crypto project, mostly from privacy watchdogs applying laws such as the General Data Protection Regulation:
- Kenya suspended Orb sign-ups in August 2023, and in May 2025 its High Court found the consent process unlawful and ordered the deletion of data collected there.
- Spain's data protection agency ordered a temporary halt in March 2024, a measure Spain's High Court upheld, and Portugal imposed a 90-day suspension the same month.
- Hong Kong's privacy commissioner ordered the project to stop operating there in May 2024.
- In December 2024 the Bavarian data protection authority, the lead regulator in the European Union, found its process did not comply with the GDPR and ordered data deleted; World appealed.
- Indonesia suspended World's operations in May 2025 after public complaints.
Beyond these enforcement actions, critics raise wider data privacy concerns: a single private company controls the hardware that decides who counts as human, payments may pressure people with little money into giving up sensitive data, and a large share of WLD is held by insiders. World says it complies with the law wherever it operates and that its systems are designed so that it cannot link a World ID to a named person.