Sam Altman's World App has received a major upgrade: adding private chat, encrypted payment wallet...
World App, a project founded by Sam Altman and formerly known as Worldcoin, currently focuses on "super applications". The latest update adds a private chat room function and a cryptocurrency payment function.
(Preliminary briefing: Thailand ordered the mandatory world currency Worldcoin to stop iris scanning, delete 1.2 million data, and $WLD transactions were also blocked)
(Background supplement: Buterin’s latest long article warned "smart watch personal asset monopoly": far more dangerous than Worldcoin, open source and verifiable is true freedom)
Contents of this article
On December 11, OpenAI and World co-founder Sam Altman announced in San Francisco that World App is no longer just a wallet for scanning iris to collect WLD, but a "super App" that integrates end-to-end private communication and stablecoin payment. The official goal is to reach 1 billion users within three years, with the goal of becoming the standard for human certification in the post-AI era.
"Authentication" communication function
The new function World Chat is based on the XMTP protocol. On the surface, it is an encrypted messaging tool similar to Signal, but at its core it is a social communication design. Each conversation is colored. Users verified by Orb iris are displayed as blue bubbles, while unverified users are gray.
World visualizes "whether it is a real person", and can directly send (or request payment from the other party) cryptocurrency and US dollar stable currency in the chat room.
Sam Altman said:
In AI In a world overrun by agents, distinguishing unique humans while preserving privacy becomes extremely difficult, yet more important than ever.
This approach of incorporating verification into daily chats makes "iris scanning" no longer an isolated behavior, but a ticket to gain social recognition.
There is no threshold for iris swiping
It is far from enough to attract users by issuing coins through verification. Even if World Pay does not pass iris verification, unverified users can directly transfer cryptocurrencies such as USDC (displaying digital dollars), EURC or WLD in the chat window. The experience is almost seamless with Venmo. More importantly, World and partner banks have launched virtual accounts and salary payment services in 18 countries. Users can transfer their work income directly to the app’s virtual bank account.
According to TechCrunch, World’s goal is to “capture users with convenience first, and then turn the convenience of life into human verification.” In other words, when wallets and salaries are directly transferred to the same App, users' motivation to voluntarily scan their iris for verification will be greatly increased.
Hardware supply is still the biggest obstacle
On-chain data shows that the number of people who have completed iris verification is still in the range of 6.7 million to 20 million, which is far away from 1 billion. The metal ball Orb is the actual bottleneck of the entire user funnel.
World launched the handheld Orb Mini in April this year in an attempt to increase the mobility of verification possibilities, and revealed that it will later license the sensor technology to mobile phone manufacturers. If the verification module is directly built into the iPhone in the future, World's expansion speed will be able to escape the constraints of offline deployment.
After Trump entered the White House for the second time, the direction of encryption regulation has become relatively friendly, clearing the way for World to launch virtual bank accounts in the United States. However, the EU's strict attitude towards biometric data has not relaxed yet. World can only use zero-knowledge proof, MPC and IrisCode to combine, emphasizing that the official "will never retain the original iris image."
