New World event in San Francisco

The project

The Worldcoin (now World) project is designed to establish a global digital identity system using iris scans to provide financial inclusion, particularly through its World ID and WLD token. It aims to solve challenges of identity verification and enable universal access to decentralized financial systems.

From the early stages, we've partnered with Tools for Humanity, the company behind World Project, providing both frontend and backend engineering. After its launch, our team supported the project’s growth to over 7 million unique users, and we've since expanded our collaboration with TFH to include design services.

Keynote

Alex Blania and Sam Altman made five key announcements, which you can explore in detail on world.org/blog . Here, we'll only provide a brief overview:

• New Orb and new ways to verify
• World ID 3.0 featuring World ID Credentials and Deep Face
• World App 3.0 featuring mini apps
• World Chain mainnet launch
• Worldcoin becomes World

The latter is something we've been focused on intensely over the past few months — rebranding and developing a new website.

Side talks

Following the keynote, guests had the opportunity to attend side discussions held on the main and tech stages:

• Thomas Meyerhoffer, the designer behind the Orb, took guests through a design challenge that demands different thinking: creating a simple, universally understood experience.
• Remco Bloemen uncovered how cryptography is delivering bulletproof privacy as the platform grows to a billion users worldwide.
• Liam Horne discussed how World Chain will enable the project to scale to meet the demands of real world crypto applications, become the first blockchain to prioritize transactions by humans over bots, and offer an opportunity for blockchain developers to reach the largest network of human users in the world.
• Andy Wang demonstrated the power of building apps that scale for millions and see the developer experience first hand.

Fireside chat with Sam and Alex

To close the event, there was a fireside chat with Sam Altman and Alex Blania, moderated by Ashlee Vance, and followed by a Q&A with the audience. The discussion moved beyond the announcements, covering broader topics such as AI, blockchain, and the World Project's role in the evolving AI landscape. Personally, I found several points really interesting. For instance, in response to one of the questions, Sam suggested the potential for AI to create personalized education programs, which could be far more accessible in developing countries than human teachers.

The new orb

The next generation Orb, unveiled at the new world event, offers more advanced technologies that enable World ID proof of human verifications to scale faster and more efficiently than before.

I tried out the Orb myself to get verified, and while its camera lens movement might feel a bit unsettling, the process was quick and seamless from a UX perspective. All you need to do is sign up on the World App, scan the QR code with the Orb, and look into the device for a few seconds.

The Orb’s design has evolved to be much more Apple-like, and in my opinion, it feels significantly more refined and human friendly than before. The green circle filling up during verification was especially intuitive and made perfect sense.

Production value

The organization and attention to detail were on point, with food and drinks continuously served throughout the event, ensuring that guests had everything they needed or desired all under one roof. You can’t expect anything less from such a high profile project.

Final thoughts

Following these significant announcements and the expansion of the project’s scope, it’s evident that Tools for Humanity shifted its focus toward building a comprehensive infrastructure to help humans adapt to increasingly intelligent AI. Additionally, the benefits for individuals are now communicated more clearly, which is a positive development. The event itself was quite upscale, buzzing with interesting conversations all around.