World Chain Launches in Developer Preview, Seeks to Increase Worldcoin’s Reach and Scalability

Worldcoin, the universal basic income (UBI) and proof of personhood project, has launched the developer preview of its soon-to-be-launched World Chain blockchain.

Worldcoin, a universal basic income (UBI) and proof of personhood project, has announced the launch of the developer preview of its upcoming World Chain blockchain. This new blockchain aims to provide a platform for Worldcoin users to link their verified identities to various third-party services, ranging from stablecoin finance and international remittances to commerce use cases.

The developer preview will enable developers to begin building apps and experimenting with them prior to the network's general rollout to over 10 million users across 160 different countries. Later this year, all users of World ID, the wallet app that caters to Worldcoin users, will be migrated to this new chain.

Scalability is one of the main factors driving the migration to World Chain, an Ethereum L2 that is built on top of the Optimism stack. According to Worldcoin, its users currently account for 50% of all activity on Optimism, which can reach 80% during peak periods.

As a result, World Chain is being introduced to initially handle double the workload without affecting the fee market on the new network.

The project also emphasizes the importance of safety, with World Chain launching as a stage 1 rollup that features a fault-proof system for detecting and reverting fraudulent transactions.

The concept for World Chain was first unveiled by Worldcoin in April, with the goal of addressing the current inefficiencies of blockchain systems by leveraging World ID user identification data.