Worldcoin rebrands, launches World Chain mainnet

• Worldcoin has rebranded to ‘World’ and introduced several new features to enhance its World ID.
• The project also announced the mainnet launch of its blockchain World Chain.

Worldcoin is now simply “World” after the blockchain-based identity verification project announced it’s rebranding on Oct. 17.

Sam Altman and Alex Blania, co-founders of World, announced the name change during a company event in San Francisco. As well as the rebranding, the project unveiled several updates aimed at bringing ‘proof-of-humanity’ technology to more people.

One of the key announcements is World’s unveiling of a new version of the biometric identification device the Orb. The company said the next-gen Orb is powered by NVIDIA’s latest Jetson chipset and offers as much as fivefold the AI performance of the previous version.

World has also introduced World ID 3.0, an advanced version of World ID and designed to enable further verification across the globe. The World ID Credentials and Deep Face features enhance this capacity, allowing those with NFC-enabled passports to verify their identity via their devices.

The new World ID 3.0 features World ID Credentials, a way for even more people to participate in & benefit from World Network using things like an NFC-enabled passport. pic.twitter.com/sLGRCEzIiD

— World (@worldcoin) October 17, 2024

According to details in the blog post, verified passport holders can claim the native cryptocurrency WLD even before fully verifying their ID via the Orb.

World Chain mainnet launch

Oct. 17 also saw World Chain, the layer-2 chain the World Foundation announced earlier in the year, launch its mainnet. Approximately 15 million people have migrated or are completing the migration to World Chain as of Thursday, October 17, 2024.

World Chain is a blockchain network that will prioritise human activity and transactions over bots and launched with support from several crypto platforms, including Dune, Uniswap, Optimism, Alchemy, Safe and Etherscan.