Worldcoin seeks Facebook-like scale for global reach, CEO Alex Blania says

Tools for Humanity CEO Alex Blania said at a group interview during Wednesday’s Korea Blockchain Week 2024 event in Seoul that Worldcoin WLD +1.67% 's current focus remains the mass distribution of iris-scanning "Orbs" to scale the project and make it more useful.

“I think fundamentally, similar to other networks that we have seen emerge over the last couple of decades like Paypal or even social networks like Facebook, they only become useful once they are at scale,” said Blania. “So everything we care about at this point is distribution around the world and the amount of users that are verified and using the service.”

Worldcoin is a project under Tools for Humanity, a company co-founded by Blania and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman. The project assigns  “World IDs” to individuals who scan their irises on an Orb device as proof of humanness, with the vision of protecting people from potential negative impacts from AI. Signees are given WLD cryptocurrencies, while Worldcoin has over 6.5 million verified World IDs across more than 160 countries around the world, according to its website . 

Next generation Orbs

Blania said at KBW2024 that the project will announce “exciting updates” regarding the next generation Orb device, which is expected in the coming weeks.

“The only new thing I can share for updates here is that it’s going to be around operational models,” Blania said. “So the way these devices will be used — there will be changes, there will be tweaks that I think might turn out to be relatively impactful.”

The Worldcoin CEO added that the project is also talking with South Korean gaming industry players for potential collaborations.

Worldcoin is also gearing up to launch its own Layer-2 network , World Chain, and recently announced partnerships with blockchain development firms Hyperlane, Moralis and others to make the new mainnet easier for users.

“It’s an Optimism super-chain, similar to Coinbase’s Base,” Blania said. “And the reason [for launch] is that we already have too much scale for Optimism mainnet. So we went from Polygon to Optimism mainnet and are launching our Layer 2.”

Addressing regulatory concerns

Meanwhile, Worldcoin has been subject to regulatory scrutiny from regulators in multiple jurisdictions, including Columbia, Spain and South Korea, where some regions took issue with Worldcoin’s collection of human iris data as a potential breach of privacy. In May, Hong Kong authorities ordered Worldcoin to cease local operations.

“The technology that we’re using is exceptionally advanced in terms of privacy-enhancing technology. And that requires a lot of education,” said Damien Kieran, the Chief Privacy Officer (CPO) at Tools for Humanity. “So existing legal frameworks tend to assess these things in one way, and what we're doing is working with those regulators to make sure they understand what we're doing and then make any adjustments we need to.” 

In March earlier this year, Worldcoin added updates that enabled users to control their scanned iris data.