What is Worldcoin?
Worldcoin is a biometric-powered cryptocurrency that uses iris scanning to verify identity. It was launched by Tools for Humanity, a San Francisco and Berlin-based company founded in 2019 by Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, along with Max Novendstern and Alex Blania. Since its inception, it has managed to raise $250 million in funding, with the backing of venture capital investors such as Andreessen Horowitz, Khosla Ventures and Reid Hoffman.
The Worldcoin (WLD) token is based on Ethereumâs ERC-20 standard, while reward distributions are managed on the Optimism mainnet. The project is centered around World ID, a global identity platform that guarantees privacy, allowing users to verify their humanity and uniqueness on any application that adopts this protocol. This is key to preventing fraud and bot attacks on social media, ensuring fair token airdrops, and encouraging an equitable distribution of limited resources. In the long term, World ID could also power innovative forms of global governance, such as quadratic voting, and even support the creation of an AI-funded Universal Basic Income (UBI).
What happened to Worldcoin?
Over the past few days, Worldcoin has been facing technical issues following its most recent update. Some users found that they were unable to withdraw or trade their WLD due to a bug that sent the tokens to an inaccessible âsafeâ. Although usersâ bonuses were credited, it was not possible to transfer or sell the tokens. Worldcoinâs support team has reported that this issue will be gradually resolved within four weeks, so some users will be able to access their tokens during this period.
During this time the price of Worldcoin increased, but Worldcoin still maintains a market capitalization close to $620 million, it still has a considerable volume of tokens that have not been unlocked, which could put downward pressure on its price in the near future.
Stay tuned for updates if you are a Worldcoin user and expect the situation to improve in the coming weeks.
