Worldcoin

WLD is the token of World, a network that verifies that people are human.

World, formerly called Worldcoin, is building a 'proof of human' network. A person scans their iris at a device called the Orb and receives World ID, a credential that lets apps check they are a unique human without learning who they are. WLD is the network's token. It launched on 24 July 2023 as a token on Ethereum and now also runs on Optimism and on World Chain, the project's own blockchain launched in October 2024.

The total supply is 10 billion WLD, and no new tokens can be created until July 2038; after that, inflation is capped at 1.5% a year. 75% is set aside for the community, mainly as grants to verified people, and 25% went to the Tools for Humanity team, its investors and a reserve. Tokens unlock daily without cliffs. In April 2026 World said 4.9 billion WLD were unlocked and 3.3 billion were in circulation; on 24 July 2026 the unlock rate fell by 43% to about 2.9 million WLD a day. Team and investor unlocks run until about July 2028.

Two groups run the project. Tools for Humanity, a venture-backed company led by Alex Blania, builds the Orb and the World App; OpenAI's Sam Altman is a co-founder of World. The World Foundation, a Cayman Islands foundation, governs WLD for now and sells tokens to fund growth: $135 million in May 2025 and $52.5 million in July 2026. World said more than 18 million people had been Orb-verified by July 2026.

Iris scanning has drawn heavy regulatory pushback. Data protection authorities in Spain, Portugal, Bavaria (Germany) and South Korea, courts in Kenya and the government of Indonesia have suspended, fined or ordered changes to World's biometric collection. World says iris data is encrypted, stored on the user's phone and checked with anonymised computation.