Worldcoin WLD
Introducing Worldcoin
Worldcoin was founded with the mission of creating a globally-inclusive identity and financial network, owned by the majority of humanity. If successful, Worldcoin could considerably increase economic opportunity, scale a reliable solution for distinguishing humans from AI online while preserving privacy, enable global democratic processes, and show a potential path to AI-funded UBI.
Worldcoin consists of a privacy-preserving digital identity network (World ID) built on proof of personhood and, where laws allow, a digital currency (WLD). Every human is eligible for a share of WLD simply for being human. World ID and WLD are currently complemented by World App, the first frontend to World ID and the Worldcoin Protocol, developed by the contributor team at Tools for Humanity (TFH).
“Proof of personhood” is one of the core ideas behind Worldcoin, and refers to establishing an individual is both human and unique. Once established, it gives the individual the ability to assert they are a real person and different from another real person, without having to reveal their real-world identity.
Today, proof of personhood is an unsolved problem on a global scale, making it difficult to vote online or distribute value on a large scale. The problem is even more pressing as increasingly powerful AI models will further amplify the difficulty of distinguishing humans from bots. If successful as part of Worldcoin, World ID could become a global proof of personhood standard.
Some of the core assumptions behind Worldcoin are:
- Proof of personhood is a missing and necessary digital primitive. This primitive will become more important as increasingly powerful AI models become available.
- Scalable and inclusive proof of personhood, for the first time, allows aligning the incentives of all network participants around adding real humans to the network. Bitcoin is issued to secure the Bitcoin network. Worldcoin is issued to grow the Worldcoin network, with security inherited from Ethereum.
- In a time of increasingly powerful AI, the most reliable way to issue a global proof of personhood is through custom biometric hardware.
The following dynamic Whitepaper shares the reasoning behind the implementation of the project as well as the current state and roadmap.
World ID
World ID is privacy preserving proof of personhood. It enables users to verify their humanness online while maintaining their privacy through zero-knowledge proofs, via a custom biometric device called the Orb. The Orb has been designed based on the realization that custom biometric hardware might be the only long term viable solution to issue AI-safe proof of personhood verifications. World IDs are issued on the Worldcoin protocol, which allows individuals to prove that they are human to any verifier (including web2 applications) while maintaining their privacy through zero-knowledge proofs. In the future, it should be possible to issue other credentials on the protocol as well.
World ID aspires to be personbound, meaning a World ID should only be used by the individual it was issued to. It should be very difficult to use by a fraudulent actor who stole or acquired World ID credentials. Further, it should always be possible for an individual to regain possession of a lost or stolen World ID.
Worldcoin Token
While network effects will ultimately come from useful applications being built on top of the financial and identity infrastructure, the token is issued to all network participants to align their incentives around the growth of the network. This is especially important early on to bootstrap the network and bypass the “cold start problem”. This could lead the Worldcoin token (WLD) to become the widest distributed digital asset.
World App
World App is the first frontend to World ID: it guides individuals through the verification with the Orb and custodies an individual’s World ID credentials and implements the cryptographic protocols to share those credentials with third parties in a privacy preserving manner. It is designed to provide frictionless access to global decentralized financial infrastructure. Eventually, there should be many different wallets integrating World ID.
