Sam Altman-backed World project officially launches in six U.S. states, allowing users to claim WLD tokens by scanning their irises. It also plans to launch a card in partnership with Visa.
According to the project’s official announcement on April 30, the Sam Altman-backed project is finally making its debut in the United States. However, it is only available in six key cities for the time being, namely Atlanta, Austin, Los Angeles, Miami, Nashville and San Francisco.
Users living in the six cities will be able to claim the project’s native token, WLD (WLD), by downloading the World App, verifying their identity and scanning their irises at designated Orbs. Powered by NVIDIA, these Orbs will be located in certain areas as well as partner locations such as Razer stores across the U.S.
The project’s iris-scanning orbs previously received backlash over privacy concerns. This led to countries like Brazil and Hong Kong probing the project for collecting and storing individual face and iris information.
As a result, the project declared that it would allow users to delete their unique iris code permanently, effectively “un-verifying” their World IDs.
Alongside its American release, the project assured users that they would be given complete control over their digital identity. Through the project’s feature called Personal Custody, the project claimed that users’ personal data would remain stored only on their device and it would not be transferred to the project’s server or any third party.
“Advanced cryptographic systems – including Anonymized Multi-Party Computation and zero knowledge proofs – ensure that your data and actions remain private while your humanity is verified,” wrote the project.
World Card powered by Visa
In addition, the project announced that it also plans to release a debit card powered by Visa which would automatically be connected to the World App. Users would be able to spend their WLD tokens at any merchant that accepts Visa cards.
Merchants would receive fiat currencies instead of WLD tokens, allowing users to spend rewards without having to convert their cryptocurrency into cash.
Once it is publicly available, verified users will have the opportunity to receive a card that is linked to their unique World ID.
At press time, WLD has gone down 2.33% in the past 24 hours. The token is currently valued at $1.05, after reaching a daily high of $1.17. Its market cap stands at nearly $1.4 billion, with a daily trading volume of $465 million. In the past week, the token has gone up by 23.59%.