Sam Altman's Worldcoin Rebrands as 'World', Introduces 'World Chain' on Ethereum Layer 2

Oct 17, 2024, 06:19 PM

Worldcoin, the company co-founded by Sam Altman and Alex Blania, has rebranded as 'World' and launched 'World Chain,' an Ethereum Layer 2 blockchain designed to prioritize human identity verification. During their first public launch event in San Francisco, Altman and Blania introduced World Chain, which is built on the Optimism Stack and forms part of the Optimism Superchain ecosystem. At the event, the company unveiled a new Orb device, with attendees receiving their own, emphasizing their focus on biometric verification. They also announced the launch of a Deep Face SDK aimed at verifying user identities to combat deepfake technologies, integrating with applications like Zoom and FaceTime. The event began with the greeting 'Hello World,' marking the start of a new chapter. World Chain aims to leverage its existing base of approximately 15 million World ID holders and World App users, who are in the process of migrating to the new blockchain. The platform focuses on creating a 'humans-only' network built around verified identities, particularly significant in an age of AI and bots. Additionally, the company announced World ID 3.0, advancing their identity verification solutions. World Chain is now live on Uniswap, where users can trade the World Token, and memecoins have already appeared on the platform. Partners such as MoonPay, Alchemy, Owlto Finance, and Uniswap are supporting the launch, providing services like fiat on-ramping, cross-chain bridging of ETH between World Chain and over 40 other networks, and blockchain infrastructure. The launch marks a significant step in building the Superchain and scaling Ethereum, attracting world-class teams to the ecosystem.