OpenAI CEO Sam Altman is in “advanced talks” to secure $100 million in funding for a crypto project that aims to develop a decentralized and globally distributed token called Worldcoin, according to a Financial Times report.
The report said new and existing investors joined the funding round. In its public launch, the startup boasted several prominent investors in its Series A funding round, including venture capital firms Andreessen Horowitz and Coinbase Ventures. Former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried and LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman also participated in the previous fundraising.
An anonymous source said the potential funding was sizable, given the prolonged winter in the crypto sector. “It’s a bear market, a crypto winter,” the source said. “It’s remarkable for a project in this space to get this amount of investment.”
Altman co-founded Worldcoin with the project’s current CEO, Alex Blania and Max Novendstern, with work on the venture starting in early 2020. The project incorporates artificial intelligence technology (AI) in its mechanism, especially prominent in its World ID feature. The protocol is a “privacy-preserving digital identity” which employs AI to identify each user’s “humanness.”
Worldcoin says that the growing complexity of AI makes it difficult to distinguish between AI and humans on the internet, which creates urgency in developing authentic human recognition and verification. The project plans to use a secure biometric device to ensure unique credentials to solve the issue. Worldcoin claims that users can still maintain anonymity despite the identification procedure because it does not store user data.
It should be noted that AI still requires humans for data training, which can be costly as these trainers must receive incentives to perform the task. Experts have proposed decentralized tokens as the incentive for these human trainers.
According to the founders, the Worldcoin token will be the first one in the world to be distributed globally and freely. They say the project enables a path to “AI-funded non-state” Universal Basic Income and the fair global distribution of digital tokens.
Early contributors to the project have developed the pilot versions of hardware, a mobile client and a deployment system for the token. Developers plan to have the Worldcoin protocols fully decentralized in the future.
Worldcoin is preparing to launch its blockchain protocol and resume its transaction records within “the next six weeks.” The project is currently operating in beta.
Worldcoin introduces ‘gas-free’ wallet
Worldcoin introduced a gas-free crypto wallet, the World App, last week. This wallet incorporates the project’s World ID feature. World App works on Android and iOS operating systems and currently operates on the Polygon blockchain.
According to the developer, the app enables global transfers using the native token, other digital assets and traditional currencies. It allows users to keep and transfer United States Dollar Coin (USDC), Dai, Ether Worldcoin and wrapped Bitcoin.
Worldcoin has collaborated with regulated crypto exchange platforms, such as Ramp and Moonpay, to serve onboarding and onboarding within the app. Holders can swap tokens inside the wallet via built-in Uniswap integration. Wallet holders can also connect their phone numbers to World App, allowing crypto transfers through phone contacts.
Users who do not own a World ID can still use the wallet but cannot benefit from the “gas-free” transaction. Worldcoin explained this is because World App relies on account abstraction done by the World ID protocol to allow third-party gas payment.
Worldcoin core team member Tiago Sada said the common crypto wallets available to crypto users were “too overwhelming” for regular people because there were too many options and unclear modules. He also said that World App “is this alternative wallet that is focused just on simplicity.”