The cryptocurrency project World, founded by OpenAI's founder, has raised $67 million in funding, yet still struggles with growth challenges

Author: Gu Yu, ChainCatcher

Recently, the human verification network World announced the completion of a $67 million OTC funding round, marking the first significant OTC financing announcement in the crypto market since May of last year.

A series of products and market developments from World have also been released recently. On March 18, World launched AgentKit integrated with Coinbase, allowing AI agents to prove their association with verified unique humans through World ID when interacting with websites and online services.

According to a report by The Wall Street Journal this month, World is collaborating with a number of well-known companies, including plans to launch a payment card related to Visa, enabling users with World ID to spend digital assets. The dating app Tinder is also testing this identity system in Japan to verify that users are real individuals and that their age information is accurate.

The intent behind all these actions is clear: World is trying to expand more application scenarios for its iris-based verification ID. After rapidly expanding for four years by leveraging "regulatory arbitrage," new user growth has nearly stagnated, and the number of World Chain users is sparse. The high WLD rewards originally used to attract user registrations for verification have now become a continuous source of selling pressure.

Even with OpenAI founder Sam Altman at the helm, World still struggles to hide its panic and anxiety. They urgently need to find new narratives and practical scenarios to support their multi-billion dollar FDV.

Regulatory Crackdown in Multiple Countries, New User Numbers Plummet by 95%

In contrast to frequent product efforts, World has faced continuous setbacks at the regulatory level and has struggled to expand its market, with new user numbers plummeting over 95% since October of last year.

For a long time, World has regarded emerging markets such as Africa, Latin America, and Southeast Asia as core territories. During the window of imperfect regulation, they rapidly expanded through an incentive mechanism of "free token distribution," accumulating over 12 million verified users by May 2025.

However, starting from the end of 2024, several countries tightened regulations after completing assessments: requiring World to stop iris data collection or delete already collected biometric information. They believe that iris data, as extremely important citizen biometric data, poses risks of leakage, cross-border data flow, and unclear data usage due to insufficient data storage and protection mechanisms by World.

In November 2024, Chilean regulators required World and Rappi to stop iris scanning activities in the country; in December of the same year, German regulators ordered WorldCoin to delete human eye biometric data; in May 2025, Worldcoin and WorldID-related services were suspended in Indonesia for suspected violations; in November of the same year, Thai regulators required World to delete over 1.2 million iris scanning data...

Additionally, countries such as the Philippines, Kenya, Spain, and South Korea have also implemented similar stringent regulatory measures and fines, significantly hindering World’s previous market strategies.

Meanwhile, World has also accelerated its efforts to expand users into more developed country markets. In May and June 2025, World announced the expansion of its World human verification service to the United States and the United Kingdom. Although this brought several months of significant user growth, it was not sustainable.

According to Dune data produced by the official team, World had 20,000 to 40,000 new users daily receiving WLD token rewards from June to September 2025, but this number has been continuously declining since October, recently averaging only 1,000 to 1,500 new users per day.

Source: Dune

Token Price Drops Over 97%, "Digital Asset Treasury" Narrative Fails

Dune data also shows that the cumulative number of users who have been verified and received rewards from World is approximately 16 million, with a total of 820 million WLD distributed to users, of which users have claimed 170 million WLD.

According to official data, World currently distributes 40 WLD to each individual who verifies their World ID on Orb, and an additional 20 WLD if the user verifies their passport, all released monthly over the course of a year. The total allocation is 6 billion WLD, accounting for 60% of the total issuance.

Perhaps influenced by continuous user selling pressure and a weakening overall market, WLD has also become one of the tokens with the largest decline among first-tier projects in the past year, with a cumulative drop of 97.5% since March of last year. The significant depreciation of reward value may also lead to a noticeable decrease in World’s attractiveness to new users.

Source: RootData

In response, World has attempted to support its price by having publicly listed companies purchase large amounts of WLD amid the wave of digital asset treasuries. In September 2025, the U.S. listed company Eightco announced the completion of a $270 million private placement to implement the Worldcoin treasury strategy, and its stock code was changed to ORBS.

Notable VCs such as BitMine, World Foundation, FalconX, Pantera, GSR, Coinfund, Brevan Howard, and Wedbush participated in the investment.

In early March this year, Eightco disclosed that it currently holds 270 million WLD, 11,000 ETH, and $82 million in cash.

In mid-March, Eightco announced a new financing commitment of $125 million, with Bitmine leading with $75 million and ARK Invest committing to invest at least $25 million. At the same time, Eightco announced the completion of its first strategic investment in OpenAI, amounting to $50 million, further strengthening its relationship with the World ecosystem.

Source: RootData

However, this series of capital operations has not fundamentally reversed the downward trend of WLD prices. By the end of March, the WLD price had dropped to $0.24, setting a historical low.

World's announcement of a new round of OTC financing, unusually without disclosing specific investors, has further intensified market skepticism.

However, World still has the ultimate trump card—Sam Altman. On April 17, World will hold the "Lift Off" World ID global launch event in San Francisco, with Sam Altman co-hosting alongside World CEO Alex.

In the context of multiple pressures on product advancement, user growth, and token prices, can this important figure of the AI era bring a turnaround for World?