Spain Bans Worldcoin Operations Over Data Privacy Concerns

Worldcoin Launches WLD Token on Optimism, Trading Starts on Major Exchanges

Are These the Next Blockchain Titans?

What Is Worldcoin? Iris-Scanning Crypto Project Founded by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman

## What Is Worldcoin (WLD)?
The mission of the Worldcoin project is to build the world’s largest identity and financial network as a public utility, giving ownership to everyone.

The Worldcoin system revolves around [World ID](https://worldcoin.org/world-id), a privacy-preserving global identity network. World ID enables users to verify their humanness online ("Proof of Personhood") while maintaining their privacy through [zero-knowledge proofs](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero-knowledge_proof).

To engage with the Worldcoin protocol, individuals must first download [World App](https://worldcoin.org/world-app), the first wallet app that supports the creation of a World ID. Individuals visit a physical imaging device called the [Orb ](https://worldcoin.org/blog/worldcoin/orb-faqs) to get their World ID *Orb-verified*. Most Orbs are operated by a network of independent local businesses called [Orb Operators](https://worldcoin.org/blog/worldcoin/what-is-worldcoin-operator). The Orb uses multispectral sensors to verify humanness and uniqueness, with all images being promptly deleted on-device per default (absent explicit consent to Data Custody). 

All Orb-verified World IDs holders are entitled to claim recurring grants of free WLD tokens (WLD tokens are not available in the US; see the [Worldcoin Tokenomics](https://whitepaper.worldcoin.org/tokenomics) section of the project's whitepaper for details). This has the potential to make WLD the most widely distributed digital currency.

The WLD token is designed as a utility token with governance properties, empowering users by giving them a say over the future of the protocol. Beyond conventional "one-token-one-vote" governance mechanisms, the introduction of World ID paves the way for "one-person-one-vote" mechanisms. These two mechanisms can also be combined to enable new ways of governance. After launch, the Worldcoin Foundation will solicit proposals and work with the community on how World ID and the WLD token should interact in Worldcoin's governance model (see the [project's whitepaper](https://whitepaper.worldcoin.org) for details on governance and decentralization).

The community of users will determine the token's utility, but a few other use cases in addition to governance could emerge. For example, users may decide to use the WLD token to pay for certain actions in World App or another wallet app, to make other payments, or to signal their approval for certain initiatives or causes.

WLD is an ERC-20 token on Ethereum. Individuals will receive their user grants on Optimism Mainnet. Therefore, most WLD transactions will likely take place on the Optimism network.

## Who Are the Founders of Worldcoin?

Worldcoin was founded by Sam Altman, Alex Blania, and Max Novendstern (Max Novendstern left the project in July 2021). The most well-known of the co-founders, Sam Altman, is also the co-founder and current CEO of OpenAI and former president of Y Combinator, a startup incubator. Initial research and development for the Worldcoin project was conducted by Tools for Humanity (TFH) and other partners.

Worldcoin has raised over 250M USD across several funding rounds from investors such as a16z, Khosla Ventures, Bain Capital Crypto, Blockchain Capital, and Tiger Global, among others.

## What Makes Worldcoin Unique?

Worldcoin aims to build the world's largest identity and financial network, achieving truly global adoption at a billion-people scale. In contrast to most other crypto projects, the majority of the WLD tokens will be given to individuals - simply for being human.

Using [World ID](https://worldcoin.org/world-id), individuals will be able to prove that they are a real, unique human to any platform that integrates with the protocol, including to [web3 systems](https://worldcoin.org/blog/announcements/talent-protocol-first-web3-platform-integrate-world-id-europe), social networking sites, and governmental programs. This will enable fair airdrops or token/NFT sales, provide protection against bots/sybil attacks on social media, and enable the fairer distribution of limited governmental resources. Furthermore, World ID can also enable global democratic processes and novel forms of governance (e.g., via quadratic voting), and it may eventually support a path to AI-funded UBI.

Over two million people from more than 30 different countries across five continents have verified at an Orb during the pre-launch phase, which lasted from May 2021 untill July 2023. At launch, Worldcoin begins the [rollout of 1,500 Orbs](http://worldcoin.org/blog/announcements/worldcoin-begins-rollout-orbs-meet-global-demand-world-id) across 35+ cities in 20+ countries to meet the global demand for World ID.

## Related Pages:

For more information about World ID, the Orb, and the Worldcoin protocol, please see the [Worldcoin Whitepaper](https://whitepaper.worldcoin.org/). (version July 24, 2023).

For more information about Worldcoin's tokenomics, please see the [Worldcoin Tokenomics](https://whitepaper.worldcoin.org/tokenomics) section of the project's whitepaper.

## How Many Worldcoin (WLD) Tokens Are There in Circulation?

The initial total supply of Worldcoin is 10 billion WLD.

For 15 years following launch, the supply cap is fixed to 10B WLD (enforced by the WLD smart contract). After 15 years, governance may decide to implement an inflation rate of up to 1.5% per year if it deems necessary for the long-term sustainability of the protocol. Governance will also decide how to allocate these newly minted tokens (if any). The inflation cap of 1.5% per year is enforced by the WLD smart contract. Per default, unless changed via governance, the inflation rate is set to 0%.

The 10B WLD tokens are allocated to different stakeholders as follows:

* 75% of the WLD tokens are allocated to the Worldcoin community.
* 9.8% of the WLD tokens are allocated to the Initial Development Team.
* 13.5% of the WLD tokens are allocated to TFH Investors.
* 1.7% of the WLD tokens are allocated to the TFH Reserve.

The Worldcoin Foundation has formulated an aspirational token allocation goal, aiming to allocate at least 60% of all WLD tokens (coming from the Worldcoin Community pool) to individuals in the form of user grants. See the [Worldcoin Tokenomics](https://whitepaper.worldcoin.org/tokenomics) section of the project's whitepaper for details.

For live on-chain data about WLD, see [this Dune dashboard](https://dune.com/worldcoin/worldcoin).

## How Is the Worldcoin Protocol Secured?

The WLD token contract is deployed on Ethereum Mainnet and the token is bridged to the Optimism “layer 2” network. It therefore inherits the security properties of these two blockchains.


Worldcoin

Welcome to Worldcoin's Community channel aggregated by CoinMarketCap.

Ethereum

Shiba Inu

Chainlink

UNUS SED LEO

Uniswap

Quant

Ondo

Bitget Token

FLOKI

The Sandbox

Synthetix

AIOZ Network

Maker

Fetch.ai

JasmyCoin

Octopus Network

Wall Street Baby

GG MetaGame

X2Y2

Mythos

Arbitrum is an Ethereum layer-two (L2) scaling solution. It uses optimistic rollups to achieve its goal of improving speed, scalability and cost-efficiency on Ethereum. Arbitrum benefits from the security and compatibility of Ethereum. Another benefit is the higher throughput and lower fees compared to Ethereum. That is made possible thanks to moving most of the computation and storage load off-chain.

Arbitrum’s native token is called ARB and is used for governance. Offchain Labs, the developers behind Arbitrum, announced the shift to a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) structure — the Arbitrum DAO. ARB holders can vote on proposals that affect the features, protocol upgrades, funds allocation and election of a Security Council.

Arbitrum has an ambitious roadmap for 2023, which includes: Launching its own layer-three solution called Orbit; Enabling developers to deploy programs written in popular programming languages like Rust, C++, and more using Stylus; Expanding its validator set to include more independent institutional validators; Moving its protocol to layer two with Arbitrum One.

On March 16, 2023,  Arbitrum announced their highly anticipated airdrop of ARB. The token will be airdropped to early users and DAOs building on Arbitrum, with 12.75% of the total supply to be distributed. Recipients were rewarded on a point-based system depending on their interaction with the Arbitrum network until a cutoff date of March 1, 2023. The token generation event is on March 23, 2023.

Arbitrum

Sui is a groundbreaking layer-1 blockchain platform designed to support the needs of global adoption by offering a secure, powerful, and scalable development platform. At its core, Sui leverages a novel object-centric data model and the secure Move programming language to address inefficiencies prevalent in existing blockchain architectures.

On top of strong technical foundations, Sui prioritizes user experience by eliminating barriers commonly associated with blockchain interactions. Through innovations like zkLogin, sponsored transactions, and programmable transaction blocks, Sui creates a higher standard for user experience within Web3 by ensuring applications are accessible and user-friendly.

RenderToken (RNDR) is a distributed GPU rendering network built on top of the Ethereum blockchain, aiming to connect artists and studios in need of GPU compute power with mining partners willing to rent their GPU capabilities out. Conceived in 2009 by OTOY, inc. CEO Jules Urbach and launched in 2017, RNDR held its first public token sale in October of that same year, followed by a private sale period lasting from January 2018 – May 2018, wherein a total of 117,843,239 RNDR were sold at a price of 1 RNDR = $0.25 USD equivalent of token.
During the private sale period, early adopters were onboarded onto the RNDR Beta Testnet, where beta node operators and artists worked collaboratively with the RNDR team in building and testing the network, up until its public launch on April 27th 2020.

Render

Optimism (OP) is a layer-two blockchain on top of Ethereum. Optimism benefits from the security of the Ethereum mainnet and helps scale the Ethereum ecosystem by using optimistic rollups. That means transactions are trustlessly recorded on Optimism but ultimately secured on Ethereum.

Optimism is one of the biggest scaling solutions for Ethereum with over $500 million in TVL. It is home to 97 protocols, the biggest being Synthetix (SNX), a derivatives exchange, Uniswap (UNI), a DEX, and Velodrome (VELO), an AMM. Users can begin their journey on Optimism by adding the chain on their Metamask and bridging tokens like ETH to the L2. On May 31, 2022, Optimism conducted a highly anticipated airdrop of its OP token.

Optimism

Celestia

Founded in 2017 and launched via IEO on Binance in March 2019, Fetch.AI is an artificial intelligence (AI) lab building an open, permissionless, decentralized machine learning network with a crypto economy. Fetch.ai democratizes access to AI technology with a permissionless network upon which anyone can connect and access secure datasets by using autonomous AI to execute tasks that leverage its global network of data. The Fetch.AI model is rooted in  use cases like optimizing DeFi trading services, transportation networks (parking, micromobility), smart energy grids, travel — essentially any complex digital system that relies on large-scale datasets.

SingularityNET is a blockchain-powered platform that allows anybody to easily "create, share, and monetize" AI services, thanks to its globally-accessible AI marketplace.

Through the SingularityNET marketplace, users can browse, test and purchase a huge variety of AI services using the platform’s native utility token — AGIX. Moreover, the marketplace represents an outlet AI developers can use to publish and sell their AI tools, and easily track their performance.

With the benefits of LLMs and generative AI are increasingly exciting, their limitations are also becoming increasingly apparent. The convergence of structured knowledge with neural networks is emerging as the key to overcoming their shortcomings.

Uniquely positioned at the heart of this convergence, SingularityNET will prioritize the integration of Knowledge Graphs (KGs) and comprehensive Neural Symbolic tools for LLMs, with the goal of empowering developers to create the next generation of AI systems on the SingularityNET Platform.

SingularityNET is strategically positioned to become the Knowledge Layer of the Internet, leading the evolution of the emerging AI landscape while also laying the foundations for the Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) of tomorrow.

The team behind SingularityNET pioneered the development of an AI known as Sophia, which is described as the "world's most expressive robot". SingularityNET’s goal is to enable Sophia to be able to fully understand human language, and continue developing “OpenCog” — an AI framework that is hoped to eventually achieve a state known as “advanced general intelligence,” i.e. human-level artificial intelligence (or beyond).

The platform was first announced in 2017 and completed an initial coin offering (ICO) in December the same year, raising $36 million in just one minute.

SingularityNET

Aptos is a Layer 1 Proof-of-Stake (PoS) blockchain that employs a novel smart contract programming language called Move, a Rust-based programming language that was independently developed by Meta (formerly Facebook)’s Diem blockchain engineers.

Aptos’s vision is a blockchain that brings mainstream adoption to web3 and empowers an ecosystem of DApps to solve real-world user problems.

The PoS blockchain can achieve a theoretical transaction throughput of over 150,000 transactions per second (tps) through parallel execution.

In March 2022, Aptos raised $200 million in a seed round led by the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz (a16z). Other crypto heavyweights like Tiger Global and Multicoin Capital took part in the funding round. Fast forward to July, the startup raised another $200 million in a Series A round with participation from Dragonfly, Apollo Global, Franklin Templeton, Animoca, Jump Crypto and others.

Two months later, Binance Labs made a strategic investment of an undisclosed amount in Aptos.

On Oct. 18, 2022, Aptos announced the mainnet launch, while the Aptos genesis occurred on Oct. 12, 2022.

Aptos

ORDI

Injective is a blockchain built for finance. It is an open, interoperable layer-one blockchain powering next-generation DeFi applications, including decentralized spot and derivatives exchanges, prediction markets, lending protocols and more.

Injective uniquely provides powerful core financial infrastructure primitives that applications can leverage, including a fully decentralized MEV-resistant on-chain orderbook. In addition, all forms of financial markets such as spot, perpetual, futures and options are fully on-chain. The decentralized cross-chain bridging infrastructure is compatible with Ethereum, IBC-enabled blockchains, and non EVM chains such as Solana.

Injective also provides a next-generation, highly interoperable smart contract platform based on CosmWasm, with advanced interchain capabilities. Injective is custom built with the Cosmos SDK and utilizes Tendermint-based Proof-of-Stake consensus mechanism, providing instant transaction finality with the ability to sustain lightning-fast performance (10,000+ TPS).

The Injective ecosystem includes 100+ projects and over 150,000 community members globally. Injective is backed by a group of prominent investors such as Binance, Pantera Capital, Jump Crypto and Mark Cuban.

Injective’s core exchange module provides state-of-the-art capabilities including an advanced on-chain order book and matching engine for spot, perpetual, futures and options markets, resistance to Miner-Extractable Value (MEV) through frequent batch auction order matching, and zero gas fees for users.

Injective natively uses IBC and is highly-interoperable with multiple layer 1s, including, but not limited to, Polygon and Solana (through an upcoming Wormhole integration). It is also uniquely built to be interoperable with Ethereum, through its own decentralized ERC-20 token bridge, making Injective the first network within the Cosmos ecosystem to natively support Ethereum assets.

Smart contracts are implemented on Injective through CosmWasm, allowing for multi-chain smart contract transactions to occur seamlessly. Injective, however, is the only blockchain that enables automatic smart contract execution. This capability serves as a powerful building block for developers to create novel use cases that would not be possible on any other chain.

The use cases intended for INJ include but are not limited to: protocol governance, dApp value capture, Proof-of-Stake (PoS) security, developer incentives and staking. Further details regarding each of these use cases can be found below:

Protocol Governance: The INJ token governs every single component of Injective, including chain upgrades. Since its mainnet launch, the Injective community has actively contributed to governance, with all proposals passing through a DAO governance vote. The comprehensive governance page is available here.

Protocol Fee Value Capture: 60% of all fees generated from dApps enter an on-chain buy-back-and-burn auction to maintain the deflationary nature of INJ. The burn auction page is available here.

Tendermint-based Proof-of-Stake (PoS) Security: INJ is used to secure the Injective blockchain using a proof-of-stake mechanism. Validators and delegators can both participate in staking.

Developer Incentives: 40% of fees generated by users on dApps built on Injective go directly towards incentivizing new developers building on Injective which brings an ever growing funnel of builders to Injective.

Injective

PEPE is a deflationary memecoin launched on Ethereum. The cryptocurrency was created as a tribute to the Pepe the Frog internet meme, created by Matt Furie, which gained popularity in the early 2000s.

The project aims to capitalize on the popularity of meme coins, like Shiba Inu and Dogecoin, and strives to establish itself as one of the top meme-based cryptocurrencies. PEPE appeals to the cryptocurrency community by instituting a no-tax policy and being up-front about its lack of utility, keeping things pure and simple as a memecoin.

In late April to May 2023, the explosive surge of PEPE caused its market cap to reach a high of $1.6 billion at one point, minting millionaires out of early holders and attracting a strong community of like-minded followers. It has induced what some may dub a "memecoin season," causing other memecoins — some launched within hours — to go on spectacular pumps and just as astounding dumps. It remains to be seen if PEPE and other memecoins will go on to new highs, although that is certainly the hope of many believers waiting for the coming BTC halving cycle praying for a Bull Run.

The PEPE roadmap features three phases, where phase one includes listing on CoinMarketCap, and getting $PEPE trending on Twitter, while phase two includes listing on centralized exchanges (CEXs) and phase three includes “tier 1” exchange listings and what the team terms a “meme takeover.”

Pepe

Pyth Network

Manta Network

Arkham is a blockchain analysis platform that uses artificial intelligence (AI) to deanonymize the blockchain and on-chain data.

The platform’s two main components are the Analytics Platform and Intel Exchange. The Analytics Platform covers analytics on various entities, exchanges, funds, whales and tokens. For instance, you can check the portfolio holdings, transaction history, exchange flows, network relationships and other on-chain analytics. The Intel Exchange allows anyone to buy and sell address labels and other intelligence, either through bounties, auctions or the DATA Program.

Arkham uses an in-house AI engine with various sources of data, such as public records, social media, web scraping and user submissions. The data is used to label addresses and provide entity analytics for ULTRA, the company’s AI algorithm.

Arkham’s platform can be used for various purposes, such as tracking stolen funds, identifying fraudsters, verifying counterparties, auditing transactions, investigating hacks, and more. Arkham claims that its platform can help combat the proliferation of crypto crimes and scams by incentivizing on-chain research.

However, Arkham’s platform has also raised privacy concerns among some crypto users and advocates, who argue that deanonymizing the blockchain violates the principles of anonymity and censorship-resistance that underpin the crypto movement. Arkham has defended its platform by saying that it does not collect or store any personal data from users, and that it only provides publicly available information that can be verified on the blockchain.

Arkham

Solana is a highly functional open source project that banks on blockchain technology’s permissionless nature to provide decentralized finance (DeFi) solutions. While the idea and initial work on the project began in 2017, Solana was officially launched in March 2020 by the Solana Foundation with headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland.

To learn more about this project, check out our deep dive of Solana.

The Solana protocol is designed to facilitate decentralized app (DApp) creation. It aims to improve scalability by introducing a proof-of-history (PoH) consensus combined with the underlying proof-of-stake (PoS) consensus of the blockchain.

Because of the innovative hybrid consensus model, Solana enjoys interest from small-time traders and institutional traders alike. A significant focus for the Solana Foundation is to make decentralized finance accessible on a larger scale.

Solana

Starknet

NEAR Protocol is a layer-one blockchain that was designed as a community-run cloud computing platform and that eliminates some of the limitations that have been bogging competing blockchains, such as low transaction speeds, low throughput and poor interoperability. This provides the ideal environment for DApps and creates a developer and user-friendly platform. For instance, NEAR uses human-readable account names, unlike the cryptographic wallet addresses common to Ethereum. NEAR also introduces unique solutions to scaling problems and has its own consensus mechanism called “Doomslug.”

NEAR Protocol is being built by the NEAR Collective, its community that is updating the initial code and releasing updates to the ecosystem. Its declared goal is to build a platform that is “secure enough to manage high value assets like money or identity and performant enough to make them useful for everyday people.”

Flux, a protocol that allows developers to create markets based on assets, commodities, real-world events, and Mintbase, an NFT minting platform are examples of projects being built on NEAR Protocol.

NEAR Protocol

Immutable positions itself as the first layer-two scaling solution for NFTs on Ethereum. According to Immutable, its blockchain does away with Ethereum’s limitations like low scalability, a poor user experience, illiquidity, and a slow developer experience. Instead, users benefit from instant trading and massive scalability while enjoying zero gas fees for minting and trading NFTs without compromising user or asset security.

Thanks to this technology, users will be able to create and distribute assets like ERC-20 and ERC-721 tokens on a massive scale. Chris Clay, the game Director of Gods Unchained, a project already building on Immutable, stated that Immutable allows Gods Unchained to implement a new meta-system that was previously impossible. In this fashion, Immutable aims to create a world-class experience for users and developers alike.