While OpenAI and Microsoft sort out who will be on whose payroll, the iris-scanning biometric project Worldcoin—founded by Sam Altman—remains silent. And its WLD token, which it launched six months ago, is down 11%, according to CoinGecko.
At the time of writing, WLD is trading at $2.22 per token. The price has fluctuated since Altman left OpenAI on Friday, falling as low as $1.84 on Saturday and rising to $2.65 in the past 24 hours.
Worldcoin did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Decrypt.
Although Worldcoin has not yet directly commented on OpenAI’s leadership changes, it reiterated saturday creed in a post on Twitter, accompanied by a video of its founders. “Here comes the biggest technology, economic and productivity boom since the internet,” the company tweeted. “Back to building a more human internet and a more flexible global economy in the age of AI,” it later added – its only comments since the drama began.
The biometric cryptocurrency project was developed by San Francisco- and Berlin-based Tools for Humanity. It was founded in 2019 by Altman, Max Novendstern, and Alex Blania. Worldcoin made a big splash when it debuted—not just for this Dark Glass-esque, eye-ball scanning tech, but for the backing it received from venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz. The project raised $115 million in May.
In its own words, Worldcoin sets out to create a biometric database that can distinguish between humans and AI and potentially provide a path to AI-funded universal basic income (UBI). The WLD distribution allocates 75% of the 10 billion tokens to its community—people who allow the project to scan their irises. The initial development team will receive 9.5%, Tools for Humanity investors will receive 13.5%, and 2% will serve as a reserve.
Worldcoin launched on July 24, 2023, with a user base of two million from its beta stage. The project’s goal is to expand its “orbing” operations to 35 cities across 20 countries, which include qualified Worldcoin Operators using Orb to sign up individuals, who in turn will receive WLD tokens as a reward.
But not everyone is so optimistic about Worldcoin’s ambitions.
Kenya suspended its enrollment due to security, privacy, and financial concerns. Although Kenya is the only country that has outright banned Worldcoin from operating, the project has also faced scrutiny from the UK, Germany, and France.
The token supply is intended to remain locked at 10 billion for the first 15 years, after which the project plans to vote on an annual inflation rate that will maintain the protocol. But it’s still unclear how Altman’s ouster from OpenAI and the new gig at Microsoft will affect his side project.
Edited by Guillermo Jimenez
