Worldcoin surpasses 2M digital ID signups; 8B to go

Cryptocurrency and digital ID startup Worldcoin says it has enrolled over 2 million signups for its anonymized digital identity credential, World ID.

Worldcoin says that it reached the milestone in under half the time it took to reach the first million. The company’s goal is to sign up every person in the world, which, to date, still puts the company approximately 7.998 billion enrollments short of its goal.

The company raised $115 million in series C venture funding in May. It is distributing its beta Worldcoin cryptocurrency tokens to enrollees, which gives them access to decentralized digital financial tools.

People sign up for World ID by scanning their irises with an imaging device that Worldcoin calls the Orb and creating a unique identifier.

Company executives credited the increase in signups to a recent global tour during which they brought Orbs to cities from Barcelona and Tokyo to Buenos Aires and New York.

During the tour, Worldcoin co-founder and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman traveled to Europe to discuss OpenAI’s large-language model ChatGPT and development of artificial intelligence with local regulators.

The company enrolled an average of over 40,000 individuals every week of June. Also last month, Spain became the largest and fastest-growing market in Europe for World ID and World ID expanded into Germany.

This month, Worldcoin announced that Talent Protocol, a blockchain-based professional community for developers, their supporters and financial backers, will be the first web3 platform to integrate World ID in Europe.

People who enroll in Talent Protocol can verify that they are human through the Tools for Humanity’s World App or other World ID-supported wallets. The partnership follows Worldcoin’s integration with Okta’s Auth0 marketplace.

In a recent interview with trade publication CoinDesk, Worldcoin Co-founder Alex Blania said that the project is trying to solve issues inherent with self-sovereign IDs.

“The problem is you need to make sure that every human being can get a unique identity that’s completely privacy-preserving,” said Blania. “And government identities simply do not work for that, because they might work well in the United States, they might work well in Europe, but much of the world does not have an actual verifiable digital identity.”

Due to government regulations, Worldcoin tokens are not distributed in the United States.

Article Topics

biometrics  |  cryptocurrency  |  digital ID  |  iris biometrics  |  Tools for Humanity  |  World  |  World ID