Sam Altman’s Worldcoin to Debut World Chain, a New Layer 2 Blockchain
Worldcoin, the crypto project co-founded by OpenAI’s Sam Altman, has today announced a new blockchain “designed to bring all humans onchain.”
The new World Chain is built to scale both Worldcoin and the broader Ethereum network to 1 billion people and beyond, said the press release shared with Cryptonews.
The team expects the developer preview of World Chain to come out “very soon” with the full launch to follow later this year.
‘Graduating’ from OP Mainnet
According to the announcement, Worldcoin user transactions represent some 44% of the activity on Optimism, a Layer-2 scaling solution for Ethereum.
This, it said, makes Worldcoin the largest application on the network.
However, it typically surpasses 80% during spikes, and sometimes it exceeds the limits.
“Given the scale and growth rate of the community, it’s time to graduate to a dedicated network,” the Worldcoin team said.
Migrating to a dedicated network will provide “meaningful gains,” they added.
Introducing World Chain, a new blockchain designed for humans ⚪️ pic.twitter.com/qNb7S3vqut
— Worldcoin (@worldcoin) April 17, 2024
Priority to Verified Humans
Speaking of bots, Worldcoin noted that some 80% of blockchain transactions could be automated. Importantly, many of these exist for valid use cases,
However, there are also unproductive bots, including yield farming bots, that cause congested networks and high fees.
Therefore, World ID is meant to help the new chain with this issue.
Everybody will be able to submit transactions on this open and permissionless network, the team said. However, verified humans’ transactions will be prioritized for faster confirmation times.
Maximum inclusivity, maximum privacy. pic.twitter.com/QyY8S4GcMx
— Worldcoin (@worldcoin) April 5, 2024
Therefore, the new chain seeks to address the issue of congested networks and high fees.
It aims to do this by providing verified humans with “some” free gas as an allowance “for casual transactions” and priority blockspace over bots.
This allowance should minimize users’ initial friction. It will initially be sponsored by the Worldcoin Foundation.
However, “the protocol will seek to reach an equilibrium where gas for casual users is ultimately covered by fees from bots and power users.”
Also, ETH will remain the native token, but users will be able to pay fees using WLD.
Therefore, when verified humans claim their WLD grants every two weeks, they will be able to use it for apps immediately.
Also, the team promises to enable developers to reach millions of real users globally with apps focused on real-world utility.
‘Apps for Every-Day Life’
World Chain will not attempt to “cover every possible blockchain use case,” said the announcement.
Instead, it seeks to be an ecosystem of decentralized financial and identity apps “focused on utility for everyday life.”
Per the announcement, the project will accomplish this via World ID’s Sybil resistance. the team will build it around Worldcoin, stablecoins, payments, rewards, ramps, lending, swapping, and more.
World Chain will be integrated with the Worldcoin protocol in order to speed up its growth and use World ID’s Proof of Personhood for sybil-resistant apps.
Furthermore, the chain will be permissionless and open source. “Ultimately,” the community will own and govern it.
Ethereum will secure the chain as a Layer-2, engineered for scalability alongside the Superchain ecosystem.
Additionally, World ID and WLD “will remain neutral public goods able to be used and deployed on networks beyond World Chain.”
World App by the numbers pic.twitter.com/zc4RNn4Ypt
— Worldcoin (@worldcoin) April 14, 2024
Meanwhile, Worldcoin launched in July 2023. So far, the team has recorded 10 million people in 160 countries who have created a World ID and a compatible wallet.
These people used their wallets to perform 75 million transactions, they said.
At the time of writing, WLD’s price has decreased 0.8% over the past 24 hours.
According to CoinGecko, it currently trades at $4.95.
It’s down 24% in a week and 46% in a month.
It reached its all-time high of $11.74 on March 10, 2024, and has dropped nearly 60% since then.
