Deniz 
Tools for Humanity CEO Alex Blania remarked at a group interview during Wednesday’s Korea Blockchain Week 2024 event in Seoul that Worldcoin’s present emphasis still remains the mass distribution of iris-scanning “Orbs” to expand the project and make it more useful.
“Fundamentally, similar to other networks that we have seen emerge over the last couple of decades, like Paypal or even social networks like Facebook, they only become useful once they are at scale,” said Blania. “Thus, at this point, everything we care about is distribution worldwide and the number of verified users of the service.”
Under Tools for Humanity, a firm Blania and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman co-founded, Worldcoin is a project. With an eye toward shielding people from possible harmful effects from artificial intelligence, the initiative issues “World IDs” to those who scan their irises on an Orb device as evidence of humanness. Signees receive WLD cryptocurrency; Worldcoin claims to have over 6.5 million verified World IDs spread over more than 160 countries on its website.
Blania indicated at KBW2024 that the project will reveal “exciting updates” on the forthcoming generation Orb device, likely in the following weeks.
“The only fresh thing I can share for updates here is that it’s going to be around operational models,” Blania added. “So the way these devices will be used—tthere will be changes, there will be tweaks that I think might turn out to be rather impactful.”
The Worldcoin CEO also mentioned that the initiative is in negotiations for possible cooperation with players in the South Korean gaming sector.
To make the new mainnet simpler for users, Worldcoin is also preparing to open its own Layer-2 network, World Chain, and recently announced alliances with blockchain development companies Hyperlane, Moralis, and others.
“It’s an Optimism superchain, similar to Coinbase’s base,” Blania remarked. “The reason (for launch) is because the Optimism mainnet already has too much scale. We thus traveled from Polygon to Optimism Mainnet and are starting our Layer 2.”
Regulators in other countries, including Columbia, Spain, and South Korea, where some areas objected to Worldcoin’s collecting of human iris data as a possible privacy infringement, have also been under close inspection of Worldcoin. May saw Hong Kong authorities tell Worldcoin to stop local business.
Regarding privacy-enhancing technologies, the ones we are deploying are rather advanced. And that calls for a lot of education, said Tools for Humanity’s Chief Privacy Officer (CPO), Damien Kieran. “So existing legal frameworks tend to assess these things in one way; what we’re doing is working with those regulators to make sure they understand what we’re doing and then make any adjustments we need to.”
Worldcoin added upgrades in March earlier this year, allowing users to govern their scanned iris data.
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