Sam Altman’s Worldcoin project has rebranded and announced the release of new scanning devices

What’s new? Worldcoin project co-founders Sam Altman and Alex Blania hosted A new world conference in San Francisco, where a number of important updates were announced. In particular, the project has rebranded and is now simply called World, and to scale the project, the team has begun work on new Orb 2.0 iris scanning devices.

Project conference

What else is known? Using Orb devices at physical World offices worldwide, users are authenticated and then assigned a digital World ID and given a number of WLD native tokens as a gift.

Orb is recognized to confirm that each new user joining the Worldcoin network is a real person and not a bot, which is especially significant in the era of artificial intelligence. World’s long-term goal is to create a Proof of Human identity system that allows Internet users to prove their reality anonymously.

The new Orb 2.0 version features fewer parts, better chips, and open-source code. This will help speed up and increase production. As the creators state, they need to significantly increase the number of devices and global offices where potential users can be scanned.

Thus, the team plans to place Orb not only in its own offices, but also in various establishments, such as cafés, or stores. An app will also be created, with the help of which users will be able to order identification at home, a courier will simply bring Orb to the desired address.

At the moment, about 7 million users around the world have been authenticated. The team believes the scaling initiative will increase the audience to 700 million.

When launched in July 2023, the project was criticized by the crypto community due to privacy risks. These same concerns brought World to the attention of regulators, and investigations led to it being banned from collecting iris scans in Kenya, Spain, Portugal, and Hong Kong. It is currently under investigation in Colombia as well. Korea fined World and ordered it to correct a number of violations in order to continue operating.

In turn, the project team stated its readiness to transfer user identification technologies to governments. At the same time, it opened data about Orb hardware and allowed users to store biometric data on their smartphones.

The WLD token ranks 72nd in the overall cryptocurrency market capitalization ranking with a market cap of $1,19 billion and is trading at $2,19, having lost 1,5% overnight. Weekly growth was 24,4%, but the value has fallen 40% since the beginning of the year.