Sam Altman's controversial blockchain project, World, is launching in the U.S. – and aims to roll out 7,500 eye-scanning "orbs"

Sam Altman's controversial blockchain project World is launching in the U.S., the project announced Wednesday.

The project, which is focused on building a decentralized identity network, said it intends to roll out 7,500 eye-scanning "orbs" in cities across the country by the end of the year. The orbs will initially be available in six "key innovation hubs": Atlanta, Austin, Los Angeles, Miami, Nashville and San Francisco.

Those who decide to take the plunge and gaze into the orb will gain access to the World app and receive an airdrop of World's WLD token. By the end of the year, the project aims to have enough orbs spread throughout the U.S. to give 180 million Americans, more than half the population, access to World's network.

Altman and other executives at World's parent company Tools for Humanity announced the U.S. expansion at a press conference in San Francisco on Wednesday evening, along with a dizzying slew of new features and partnerships for the project.

The World app will now offer its users access to crypto-backed loans through non-custodial lending protocol Morpho and prediction markets through Kalshi. Later this year, WLD holders will be able to spend their tokens like cash with a new World-linked Visa debit card. The project is even integrating its identity-verification technology into some online dating apps. Starting with Tinder users in Japan, online dating giant Match Group will pilot using World ID to verify the ages of its users.

Altman said that the idea for World predated OpenAI, his generative artificial intelligence (AI) company.

"We needed some sort of way for authenticating humans in the age of [artificial general intelligence]," Altman said during the press conference. "We needed a way that we could know what content was made by humans, [and what was made] by AI. We wanted a way to make sure that humans stayed special and central in a world where the internet was going to have lots of AI-driven content."

Altman's initial ideas about how to solve the problem of human verification were "very crazy," he said - World and its eye-scanning orbs, only a little.

World is the latest crypto project to announce a U.S. expansion. Since President Donald Trump took office in January, the regulatory environment has become much friendlier to crypto projects.

The company announced it would be building a factory in Richardson, Texas - a suburb of Dallas - to help produce the orbs needed for its coming U.S. expansion. After the initial rollout, other major cities including Seattle, Orlando, San Diego and Las Vegas will receive the second wave of orbs.

"They will really be everywhere," said Alex Blania, Tools for Humanity's co-founder. "They will be in gas stations, convenience stores, and you will be able to verify within 10 minutes wherever you are."