Sam Altman’s World Project Is Expanding — and It Raises Difficult Questions About Identity.
Last year, Sam Altman’s iris‑scanning startup sounded easy to dismiss. A chrome sphere. An eyeball scan. Some crypto in return. It felt like a Silicon Valley experiment designed for headlines, not everyday life.
That framing is no longer accurate.
Over the past year, World (formerly Worldcoin) has moved from novelty to infrastructure, positioning itself as a tool for distinguishing humans from bots in an AI‑saturated internet. Its expansion has been quiet, deliberate, and increasingly mainstream.
What World is trying to build
World’s central idea is straightforward: use a biometric scan of the human iris to create a World ID, a cryptographic credential meant to prove that a person is real — without relying on names, government IDs, or accounts tied to a single platform.
The scan is performed by an Orb, a purpose‑built device that captures an iris image, converts it into an encrypted numerical hash, and discards the image itself. In return for enrolling, users receive a grant of WLD tokens, World’s native cryptocurrency. Platforms that want to verify “unique humans” then pay World to authenticate those IDs.
In April 2025, World launched in the U.S., opening enrollment centers in six cities. The company says it plans to deploy thousands of Orbs globally and has opened a manufacturing facility in Richardson, Texas. It has also introduced a smaller, portable Orb intended to allow verified users to help onboard others.
Where it’s being used
World ID is already being tested in a range of applications where identity verification has become costly or unreliable:
Online platforms are experimenting with World ID to confirm users are real people — not bots — and, in some cases, that they meet age requirements.
Video‑conferencing tools have explored “verified human” badges in response to rising deepfake‑enabled fraud.
Retail pilots have tested in‑store enrollment, with World framing the Orb as a customer verification station rather than a consumer gadget.
Financial partners, including Visa, have announced debit products linked to World accounts, allowing users to spend crypto through existing payment networks.
Taken together, these moves suggest World is aiming not for consumer fandom, but for back‑end identity plumbing.
The financial and regulatory context.
World’s expansion has not been without controversy. The WLD token that users receive for enrolling has been volatile, rising sharply after launch and later falling steeply as early allocations unlocked. Token sales by the World Foundation have drawn scrutiny, with critics arguing that incentives for early participants and insiders may not align with long‑term users.
More significantly, regulators in multiple countries — including parts of Europe, Africa, and Asia — have suspended or investigated World over concerns about biometric data collection and informed consent. Several of those actions remain unresolved, and World has stated it is adjusting practices to comply with local laws.
These reactions point less to a single flaw than to a broader discomfort: biometric identifiers are permanent, and legal frameworks for their use are still not developed.
The larger question
At a time when AI systems can convincingly imitate human speech, faces, and behavior, the demand for proof of personhood is growing fast. World’s answer — biometric uniqueness rather than documents or accounts — is technically elegant and ethically fraught.
The irony is hard to miss. The same generation of technology leaders accelerating AI’s capabilities is now proposing new forms of identity to contain its consequences.
World insists it does not store raw biometric images and that users control how their World ID is used. Critics counter that no system involving immutable biological traits can be treated like a password reset.
Both claims can be true at once.
The question isn’t whether World is building something clever. It’s whether society is ready to decide — collectively and transparently — what role biometric identity should play in a future where being human is no longer obvious online.
As Kim Komando said about this: You can cancel a stolen credit card. You cannot get new irises so think before you blink!
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