World (formerly known as Worldcoin) has launched an Ethereum Layer 2 chain, aiming to onboard real human users rather than bots.
Worldcoin, now rebranded as World, is a crypto-driven iris scanning identity platform co-founded by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, and it has launched its own Ethereum Layer 2 mainnet called World Chain on Thursday.
The core team of World Chain told Decrypt that the platform's goal is to onboard millions of verifiable human users to the blockchain, and also to drive the development of digital identity tools and applications that promote financial freedom.
World advisor Liam Horne told Decrypt that many blockchains are dominated by bots. But World Chain aims to serve the users that the project believes can benefit the most from blockchain technology: humans.
"On many chains, the algorithmic trading bots that move money on-chain outnumber the humans," Horne said. "World Chain is designed to expand human usage and build the blockchain in a more human-centric way."
World Chain is part of the Optimism Superchain, a composable Layer-2 network that shares security and other infrastructure. As a result, it can interoperate with over 20 other chains like Base and Blast, which should help it attract users from across the crypto ecosystem, Horne said. It is faster and cheaper than Ethereum's mainnet, and also provides gas subsidies for verified human users.
By utilizing Optimism's open-source development framework OP Stack, World Chain also aims to attract a wide range of developers, encouraging the building of decentralized applications with real-world use cases on its network. Optimism Unlimited's Chief Growth Officer Ryan Wyatt told Decrypt that this development will help bring more people into the blockchain.
"The work that the Worldcoin team, the Base team, and the Uniswap team have done is all contributing to and driving the progress of the OP Stack," Wyatt said. "So it's the engineering efforts of some of the best protocol engineers across the industry that are driving the development and progress, which benefits World Chain."
Worldcoin was founded in 2019 and made a splash with the launch of its Orb, a futuristic-looking device that scans users' irises and binds them to a virtual key on the blockchain. People who undergo the scan are eligible to receive a certain amount of Worldcoin, subject to regional restrictions.
World Chain will natively integrate World ID, allowing system-verified users to access priority block space. In addition to multiple stablecoin markets, it will also establish a global on-ramp network in over 150 countries.
Horne told Decrypt that the services that can be used by those excluded from traditional financial systems are key to driving adoption of the chain.
"The places that really need stablecoins to gain financial access, to move money across borders, to hedge against local currency inflation... they will use Worldcoin," Horne said. "These people need crypto."
