Sam Altman’s Worldcoin has now undergone a rebrand – the one-year-old crypto-based identity verification project will henceforth be known as simply “World.” This rebrand was announced at an event in San Francisco. Alex Blania – co-founder and CEO of Tools for Humanity (the start-up that created World), said that the former name “just doesn’t work anymore.”
“…as the scale of the project grows along with the importance of World ID’s proof of human protocol, the name “Worldcoin” no longer encapsulates the mission of the project—to accelerate every human. At the event, Blania and Altman introduced the World Network, or World for short. With its three key pillars (World Chain, World ID and Worldcoin), World is truly a network of real, verified humans built to enable an optimistic future in which humans will continue to be at the center of AI progress,” the company noted in a blog post on the matter.
At the event on Thursday, the company also unveiled a revamped version of the Orb, one that brings improved performance and efficiency. The original Orb was a device that scanned the irises of users and issued digital tokens as part of a universal basic income plan. The increasing rise of deepfakes in recent times has necessitated a revamped version of this device, and the new Orb is powered by Nvidia’s Jetson chipset. The device also comes with fewer components, while the chipset will allow it to perform biometric scans faster.
It also comes with 5G connectivity and a removable SD card. “…the next generation Orb offers more advanced technologies that enable World ID proof of human verifications to scale faster and more efficiently than before,” the company wrote, adding that it brings “5x the AI performance over the previous version to enable even faster, more seamless proof of human verifications.” World also addresses privacy concerns, revealing that the Orb will not store images, and will send them to users’ phones before deleting them permanently.
In addition to this, World is also bringing “Deep Face,” a new identification service. This will integrate with platforms like FaceTime, Zoom, and other communication apps to ensure that users can prove their identities in real-time. World ID 3.0 will feature World ID Credentials as well, which lets users store information from their physical in World App on their devices.
New users can sign up to an iris scan, and once it is verified that the person is a real human, it creates the World ID. If you are a Verified Passport holder, you can even claim WLD tokens, if applicable, and need not reveal your identity to verify your prove their citizenship, age, and possession of a passport. In similar news, it is also rolling out World App 3.0, which comes with Mini Apps (from third parties) that run inside the World App itself.
