Yesterday , Worldcoin previewed the upcoming "big event". And today, just one day later, this hot project finally announced the issuance of coins.
When many CEXs opened, the short-term price of WLD token was about $1, and then there was a short-term rapid rise. According to the Bitget market, WLD rose to $4.7 in a short period of time, an increase of more than 1000%. According to Coingecko data, the current price of WLD is floating around $2.8.
The initial circulation is 143 million, and the total amount is 10 billion. Calculated by the market value of circulation, the market value of WLD has reached 400 million US dollars, and calculated by the fully diluted valuation (FDV), this project is worth about 28 billion US dollars. In May of this year, OpenAI was valued at between US$27 billion and US$29 billion after completing a new round of financing. The market value of Worldcoin has been approximated by the superstar project OpenAI, which was also founded by Sam Altman.
Under the support of the popularity, its NFT has also seen a considerable increase. ETH to Opensea data, in the past week, the price of the Worldcoin commemorative NFT "Introducing World App " has risen from 0.0067 ETH to 0.0265 ETH , a maximum increase of 295 %.
In the past few weeks, the encryption market has not had a major market breakthrough, and there have been no out-of-market hotspots. Only a few stock game meme have become popular. Under such circumstances, Worldcoin’s team, investor background endorsement, and grand narrative story have made it the short-term focus of the market. Exchanges are scrambling to list coins, and investors are gearing up. However, there has never been a lot of controversy on it, and the model of the token also makes people doubt the support of its price.
AirDrop are scarce, currency holdings are concentrated, pie or trap?
At noon today, before the official "official announcement" of the currency issuance, OKX has announced that it has begun to accept WLD token deposits. This news has also hammered the market's expectations for the Worldcoin currency issuance.
Later, many exchanges, including Binance, followed up this hot project. Many exchanges are vying for WLD tokens, such a grand scene has not been seen in the encryption market for a long time. Can the market's high expectations for this project ignite the market's enthusiasm for trading? With the blessing of high enthusiasm, where will the price of WLD tokens go?
According to the official AirDrop rules originally announced, about 2 million early users who registered Worldcoin during the testing phase (that is, entered iris data and generated World ID) could get 25 WLD token AirDrop. Worldcoin promises to speed up registration by deploying The Orb in more than 35 cities in 20 countries around the world, with regular rewards going forward.
And this AirDrop rule also caused dissatisfaction in the community. Since World ID requires offline iris scanning, the vast majority of investors are limited by this and cannot participate in verification. Therefore, the commemorative NFT issued twice by Worldcoin is also used by the community as an option for "early participation".
Dune data shows that for the first time, the number of holdings of commemorative NFTs exceeds 58,000 addresses. The commemorative NFT issued on the Optimistic network holds more addresses, exceeding 1.6 million. But Worldcoin is not AirDrop NFT holders. Those holders expressed their outrage at Worldcoin’s AirDrop rules.
But just a few hours later, the official immediately opened the Genesis Grant AirDrop. In this application, addresses that have not entered iris can also receive AirDrop rewards.
The Genesis Grant round will run from July 24th to July 31st. Unverified iris users can pre-claim 25 WLDs, which will be reserved for 365 days. Pre-claim users can transfer out WLD after completing iris verification. It is unclear how many accounts are eligible for this round of AirDrop.
Information on the chain shows that WLD on the Optimistic chain is now being distributed. As of the release of this article, there are already 98,000 currency-holding addresses.
However, the distribution of its holdings is highly centralized. WLD is deployed on the two chains of Ethereum mainnet and Optimistic. Taking Optimistic as an example, if you currently hold more than 100 coins, you can enter the top 30 holding addresses on the OP chain.
The chain detectives also gave more accurate information. 0 x Scope Protocol monitoring found that the top 9 addresses of WLD tokens hold 99.135% of the coins, and it is speculated that the address may be controlled by the project party. Additionally, some tokens have been transferred to Binance, OKX and Bybit.
How many WLDs are in circulation?
In stark contrast to the AirDrop of only 25 coins is the huge supply and circulation of WLD.
Previously, Worldcoin has never disclosed the token economics of WLD, even until the issuance of the currency. Only briefly mentioned in the official document that the total supply is 10 billion, of which "less than 20% of the total token supply will be used to fund Orb production and protocol development, and 3% will be used for ongoing ecosystem development and maintenance."
At about 3 pm this afternoon, the official finally released the detailed token distribution plan. However, this detailed allocation plan is slightly different from the previous disclosure.
Token economics shows that the total supply of WLD is capped at 10 billion pieces, of which 75% will be allocated to the Worldcoin community; 9.8% will be allocated to the initial development team; 13.5% will be allocated to Tools for Humanity investors; and the remaining 1.7% will be used as Tools for Humanity reserves.
Additionally, WLD will have a maximum circulating supply of 143 million at launch. Among them, 43 million WLDs will be allocated to users who have passed Orb verification during the pre-launch phase of the project, and 100 million WLDs will be loaned to market makers outside the United States. Of the 43 million tokens, the distribution ratios for each region are as follows: 32.1% in Asia, 31.6% in Africa, 18.8% in Latin America, 17.1% in Europe, and 0.1% in the rest of the world.
The pre-launch phase will run from May 2021 to July 2023. During this time period, more than 2 million people verified their World ID on the Orb in more than 30 different countries.
It is worth noting that the allocation scheme does not distinguish between ordinary users and operators. We cannot determine whether the operator is a "big user", let alone the ratio of the number of tokens obtained by users of these two identities.
According to the earliest introduction document before, the official stated that "most tokens will be distributed to users and operators. To motivate users to adopt, operators can receive token rewards for each registration of users, and the rewards will decrease over time."
How does Worldcoin realize Sam's utopian vision?
Worldcoin was launched by Sam Altman, founder of OpenAI and former president of Y Combinator. Due to OpenAI's popularity, unique iris recognition mechanism, and recognizable physical devices, this project can be said to be very popular this year.
Worldcoin research found that there are still 4.4 billion people in the world who lack legal identities. These people cannot pass digital identity verification, which makes it difficult for them to obtain financial services. Therefore, Worldcoin hopes to provide a more accessible digital identity for human beings all over the world. From the perspective of product landing, Worldcoin has three main products.
World ID: A digital identity that allows users to anonymously identify themselves as unique, real human beings. The product uses zero-knowledge proof (ZKP) to protect the privacy of users.
Worldcoin Token: A token that is freely distributed to humans worldwide and can be used for future governance.
World App: A self-hosted wallet that enables payments, purchases and transfers worldwide using Worldcoin tokens, digital assets, stablecoins and traditional currencies.
The most idealistic aspect of Worldcoin lies in the way its tokens are distributed. Worldcoin hopes to distribute cryptocurrency free of charge to every real human being in the world. Anyone can create an account by identifying their iris information, and after establishment, they can receive token rewards for free.
What's more interesting is that Sam is committed to realizing his great UBI idea through this project. The UBI policy aims to provide everyone with a certain amount of money, and its "basic income" should cover a person's basic living needs, including food, housing, and medical care. And this income should be unconditional, fixed monthly, without specific restrictions or requirements.
Specifically, Sam tries to empower everyone with financial tools through Worldcoin, use two nuclear fusion development companies to provide society with cheap energy, use AI and robots to increase social productivity, and finally achieve the liberation of human beings - use Worldcoin to issue UBI income to all human beings, and human beings who meet their basic survival needs will be able to engage in some more valuable and creative careers.
For a more detailed design of Worldcoin and Sam's grand blueprint, please refer to the article "Interpreting Worldcoin's Utopian Vision: AirDrop Billions of People Is Just the Beginning" written by Odaily Odaily . This article will not repeat them here.
However, there have been many controversies outside the story of Jujiwei. Previously, many people on social media exposed that a contractor collected local villagers’ irises from Southeast Asia, sold individual encrypted users off-site at a price of $30 or less, and helped complete the app registration phenomenon, aiming at the large-scale token AirDrop behind it.
In addition, Worldcoin also faces contradictions of regulatory intervention and data processing. Worldcoin operates a subsidiary in Germany, and according to the principles of the GDPR regulations, any data that is implemented in the EU or involves EU residents is regulated by the EU. However, Worldcoin’s de facto global implementation conflicts with EU regulations. For example, it claims that 1% of the population in Portugal has become its users, and how to handle global data has not been fully clarified.
In terms of privacy and data management, Worldcoin's mechanism design is obviously not perfect.
High valuation listing, how much room for imagination?
In October 2021, Worldcoin completed a US$25 million Series A financing led by a 16 z, with a valuation of US$1 billion, including the participation of star capital such as DCG, Coinbase Ventures, and Multicoin.
In 2022, Worldcoin has received investment from institutions such as Andreessen Horowitz (a 16 z), with a valuation of up to 3 billion US dollars.
In May of this year, Worldcoin announced the completion of a $115 million Series C financing led by Blockchain Capital.
For an unreleased project, the valuation of $3 billion is undoubtedly a behemoth. For secondary market investors, this is not necessarily a good thing.
How much room is left for the growth of super-large projects of up to US$3 billion? It is difficult for us to make accurate predictions on the growth potential of Worldcoin, but what is clear is that if the current market price is used as a reference, the valuation of 3 billion US dollars can already rank the 30th in the market value of cryptocurrencies, surpassing Monero, and belonging to the market value range of 3 billion to 5 billion US dollars with BCH, AVAX, SHIB, UNI, and LINK.
At present, Worldcoin AirDrop tokens have not been fully released, and market liquidity is still insufficient. Is Wordcoin a conceptually supported, short-lived hype target, or can it become a successful project for long-term construction and development towards its vision? Odaily Odaily will continue to pay attention to Worldcoin, so stay tuned for follow-up reports.
