Worldcoin unveils Ethereum chain where ‘verified people get priority’

The Worldcoin Foundation, a community “feeder” linked to the human identity verification-eye-scanning Worldcoin project, is launching the world chain blockchain at the end of this year, the non-profit organization said on Wednesday.

Built using the “Superchain” from layer-2 provider Optimism, the global chain is built on the Ethereum blockchain and uses ETH as its native token. Worldcoin (WLD) can be used to pay gas bills.

“We are building a world chain because of [Worldcoin] The project does not fit into the Optimism mainnet,” Tiago Sada told Decrypt. Sada is the head of product, engineering and design for Tools for Humanity, the project developer and an advisor to the foundation. “We love the Optimism stack, which is why we use it as the foundation of the world chain.”

Sada explained that Worldcoin users represent an average of 44% of the activity on Optimism and sometimes exceed 90%. More than 2 million active users use Worldcoin technology every day.

“There are a lot of things that need to happen to improve this, but the first is to have an independent network,” said Sada, who added that the same group that developed Worldcoin for Optimism is working on the new Worldchain project. .

Layer-2 blockchain refers to a network built on another, usually large, blockchain such as Bitcoin, Ethereum and Solana. Layer-2 protocols aim to provide faster transactions than the blockchain they run on. Examples of layer-2 protocols include Optimism, Bitcoin's Lightning Network, and Polygon.

In the year Since its launch in 2022, Humanity's global identification tools have attracted more than 10 million users in 160 countries. According to the company, more than 5 million people have verified their identity using WorldCoin Orbs. The goal of the project is to provide a way to verify that the user is a real person and not an automated bot.

“Worldchain is a new blockchain designed for humans,” Worldcoin said. “It will be open to everyone, and verified people will get priority block space at the bots, as well as gas allowances for normal transactions.”

In December, WorldCoin announced an integration with Microsoft's wildly popular sandbox game, Minecraft.

In March, the WorldCoin Foundation made the “core components” of the Orbi technology open source, allowing anyone to examine the code of the eye scanners.

Sada says a common misconception about WorldCoin and related technologies is the lack of privacy.

But WorldCoin was not without controversy. Last summer, several countries, including the United Kingdom, Kenya, France and Germany, opened investigations into privacy issues related to WorldCoin's Orbi technology.

“It's the opposite. [because] WorldCoin and WorldID are not only privacy-preserving, but actually one of the most sensitive systems around,” said Sada, acknowledging the concerns surrounding Orba and cryptographic privacy. “You can register completely anonymously, and your data is self-managed.”

While Worldcoin is only available in certain regions, Sada said Worldchain and its associated WorldApp and WorldID are open to everyone, regardless of where they live.

“The world chain is like any other layer-2,” Sada said. “You can connect to it using a supported wallet and use it like any other L2 – if you happen to use an authenticated global ID, the benefit to humanity is more.”

Worldcoin has decreased by 23.6% for the past seven days, the WLD token is at $5.00 per coin, and has increased by 4.4% since the announcement of the world chain.

Edited by Ryan Ozawa.