World Network

In October 2021, Worldcoin was introduced by its co-founders Alex Blania, Max Novendstern, and OpenAI co-founder, Sam Altman. In 2019, the trio formed Tools for Humanity (TFH). TFH is responsible for the initial research and development of the Worldcoin project. Worldcoin was originally conceived to airdrop the WLD token to a billion people, with the goal of developing a global currency that could serve as Universal Basic Income (UBI). However, it faced the challenge of identifying humans amongst bots online, which would have made it difficult to distinguish unique legitimate airdrop recipients.

To mitigate this challenge, the Worldcoin team developed the Orb device, a biometric hardware device that captures an image of a user’s eyes (iris capture). The captured image is converted into a numeric code to generate a unique World ID for the user. The project team also developed the Proof of Personhood (PoP) framework and protocol with an extended version of Ethereum’s zk-solution, Semaphore. Together with the Orb device, the PoP protocol seeks to facilitate human uniqueness verification without revealing a user’s real identity. In October 2021, the project team rolled out prototypes of the Orb devices to twelve countries across four continents (Africa, South America, Europe, and Asia), onboarding the first 25 Orb Operators.

On Oct. 31, 2022, TFH formed the Worldcoin Foundation, a non-profit entity that governs and manages the Worldcoin project toward progressive and eventual community governance. Per the project’s whitepaper, the project’s IPs, smart contracts, SDKs, patents for the Orb device design and iris technology, brand assets, domains, and social media accounts were transferred to the Worldcoin Foundation. By January 2023, Worldcoin surpassed one million sign-ups in Orb-verified users onboarded to the protocol.

Notable events in Worldcoin’s development history are as follows:

In April 2024, Worldcoin has announced World Chain, an Ethereum-based Layer-2 within the Superchain ecosystem, slated for launch later this summer.

In March 2025, the project partnered. The partnership focuses on the new ‘Razer ID verified by World ID’ - a proof of human technology that will verify real human gamers for Razer ID.

While in April 2025, Wolrd launched in the United States, with it's debut in Atlanta, Austin, Los Angeles, Miami, Nashville and San Francisco.

In September 2025, Eightco Holdings announced a $250 million treasury pivot, initiating large-scale accumulation of Worldcoin (WLD) as its principal reserve asset.