Worldcoin (WLD)

What Worldcoin is

Worldcoin, ticker WLD, is the token of World, a network built around proving that an online account belongs to a distinct human being. Its whitepaper calls World "the real human network built to accelerate every human in the age of AI" and names WLD "the native digital currency of the World Network," distributed to verified participants (source: World whitepaper, read September 2026).

The system has three parts. World ID is "open source, decentralized infrastructure that enables relying parties to verify credentials" of real humans using zero knowledge proofs. World App is "the first frontend client to the World Network," a self-custodial wallet and credential manager. WLD is the token. They run on World Chain, an Ethereum layer 2 built with the Superchain architecture.

The problem the whitepaper says this solves is bots. It argues that as AI capability grows, "mass disinformation, election manipulation, scalable fraud and privacy-invasive tracking" become harder to defend against without a reliable way to tell a human from software. That is a sybil attack at internet scale.

For where to buy Worldcoin from your country or state, see the availability tables on this page and the venues at Exchanges.

How it works

Verification happens at a device called the Orb. The whitepaper describes it as a purpose-built biometric camera with a "multi-camera, multi-spectral optical system featuring wide-angle RGB/Infrared (IR) imaging" plus a "telephoto IR camera with steerable focus using custom lenses for high-quality iris images."

Iris texture was chosen over other biometrics for a measurable reason. The whitepaper reports false match rates "beyond 2.5×10⁻¹⁴ (one false match in 40 trillion)," and explains why the signal is so distinctive: "the iris texture is formed by random morphogenesis during gestation" and remains "essentially unique to each individual." World states a design target of a false match rate of 1×10⁻¹² to support billions of users, and reports achieving "an FMR of 2.25×10⁻¹⁴ at approximately 1×10⁻³ FNMR" in testing.

What happens to the images is the part that gets misreported most often. The Orb converts iris texture into a code using "frequency-based feature extraction (e.g., applying multi-scale Gabor wavelet filters)," and the whitepaper states that "images are only analyzed in local memory, and are deleted after verification."

Beyond that, World uses what it calls a Personal Custody Package. The whitepaper states that "images taken by the Orb are not exposed to World Foundation's (or any third party's) backend systems, but are stored locally." The package holds iris embeddings, face embeddings and encrypted multi-party computation fragments, all "encrypted on the Orb with a key provided by the user."

Checking that someone has not already verified is done without a central biometric database. Anonymized Multi-Party Computation splits iris data into "multiple encrypted, statistically random fragments" distributed to independent node operators. The whitepaper states that "no biometric data ever leave the user's device," and that the computation "reveals only a single bit per invocation: whether the individual has previously verified." Named participants include Nethermind alongside academic institutions at UC Berkeley and the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg.

World ID itself is built on Semaphore, described as an "open-source privacy layer for Ethereum applications based on zk snarks," letting a user "prove their membership of a group and send signals… without revealing their original identity." The property the whitepaper claims from this is "unlinkable pseudonymity": the same person proving humanity at two different applications cannot be correlated across them.

The whitepaper reports roughly "40M people on World App" with "about 18M people verified as human with an Orb" at the time of publication.

Supply and tokenomics

WLD's supply is capped and its distribution is published in full.

The distribution model is unusual in that most of the supply is given away over time rather than sold or emitted to validators. A verified person claims 25 WLD on first verification with proof of human, or 12.5 WLD with a passport credential, and then a recurring monthly grant. The whitepaper is explicit that those recurring figures are dated and shrinking: 3.22 WLD and 1.61 WLD are "August 2025 rates, decreasing over time."

On inflation the whitepaper is unusually restrictive. "Any inflation… can only start, at the earliest, 15 years after launch," and is capped at "1.5% annually," with the destination of any newly minted tokens decided by governance. Until then the 10 billion cap holds.

Team and investor allocations together come to 24.7% of the initial supply. RampAtlas tracks published unlock schedules separately; nothing here is a forecast of what any unlock does to a price.

History

World began from a specific bet: that proof of personhood would become infrastructure, and that biometrics were the only route to it that scales globally without depending on government identity documents. Everything in the architecture follows from trying to make that acceptable rather than invasive.

The privacy design has moved steadily toward the user holding the data. Raw iris images are analyzed in local memory and deleted. The Personal Custody Package keeps embeddings on the user's own device, encrypted with the user's key. Uniqueness checking moved to Anonymized Multi-Party Computation across independent operators, so no party sees a biometric and the computation returns one bit. Semaphore supplies the zero-knowledge layer that keeps one application's proof unlinkable from another's.

The token distribution was built to match. Rather than a sale, most of the supply is claimable by verified people, with a first grant and a recurring one that declines over time. The passport credential route, at half the token grant, gives a second path for people who cannot or will not visit an Orb.

World Chain came later, moving the network's transactions onto a dedicated Ethereum layer-2.

Risks and what to watch

The privacy claims rest on the implementation matching the description. Local-only analysis, deletion after verification, user-held encryption keys and multi-party computation across independent operators are all strong properties as designed. Each is a claim about software running on a device the user does not control, and verifying them requires trusting audits and open-source review rather than reading the chain.

Governance is centralized today. The whitepaper states that World Foundation stewards the protocol and describes progressive decentralization as an aim, with mechanisms still under development. Until then, the grant schedule and the network's direction are Foundation decisions.

Accuracy is high but not perfect, and the whitepaper says so with numbers. A reported false non-match rate around 1×10⁻³ means roughly one legitimate verification attempt in a thousand fails, which at World's target scale is a large number of people needing a fallback.

Distribution creates continuous supply. Recurring monthly grants to millions of verified people are ongoing issuance from the community allocation. The whitepaper says the grant rates decrease over time but does not publish a schedule for that decline on the pages read.

Insider allocation is material and disclosed: 11.1% to the team and 13.6% to investors, nearly a quarter of the supply between them.

Frequently asked questions

Does World store images of your iris?

The whitepaper states that Orb images "are only analyzed in local memory, and are deleted after verification," and that images "are not exposed to World Foundation's (or any third party's) backend systems, but are stored locally" inside a Personal Custody Package encrypted with a key the user provides.

How does the network know you have not verified twice?

Through Anonymized Multi-Party Computation. Iris data is split into encrypted, statistically random fragments held by independent node operators, and the computation "reveals only a single bit per invocation: whether the individual has previously verified."

How much WLD does a verified person receive?

The whitepaper publishes a first claim of 25 WLD with proof of human, or 12.5 WLD with a passport credential, then a recurring monthly grant of 3.22 WLD and 1.61 WLD respectively at August 2025 rates, which it says decrease over time.

Can WLD supply exceed 10 billion?

Not for at least 15 years after launch. The whitepaper states that any inflation "can only start, at the earliest, 15 years after launch," and is capped at 1.5% annually, with governance deciding where new tokens go.

Where can you buy Worldcoin?

Availability depends on your country or US state. See where to buy Worldcoin for the exchanges serving your jurisdiction, and Exchanges to compare fees, kyc requirements and payment methods.