Worldcoin Surpasses 1M Daily User Milestone As WLD Rally Continues

Worldcoin’s meteoric rally continues, with the project announcing that its World App surpassed 1M in daily users this past week.

Worldcoin shared the data via tweet on Feb. 17, showing that the application has consistently posted new highs for daily users since November.

The price of WLD is also pumping, with the token posting a new high of nearly $8 earlier today, before pulling back to $6.75. WLD is the strongest-performing top 100 crypto asset of the past week by a significant margin, having surged 155% in the past seven days, according to CoinGecko.

WLD’s recent momentum has been attributed to the pending launch of Sora, the new text-to-video artificial intelligence model from OpenAI, the company headed by Worldcoin co-founder, Sam Altman. Sora was unveiled on Feb. 15.

WLD’s price has also tripled since trading at $2.21 two weeks ago.

However, the rally has also bolstered the holdings of large early Worldcoin investors, including controversial entities within the web3 sector.

Data from Arkham Intelligence indicates that Teneo, the company tasked with liquidating the assets of Three Arrows Capital, the insolvent venture capital firm, currently holds 75M WLD worth $513M. Data from Spot On Chain also shows Alameda Research, the sister trading firm of the failed centralized exchange, FTX, holds 25M WLD worth $171M.

Worldcoin controversy

Worldcoin has emerged as one of the most contentious projects in web3 following its mainnet launch last July.

Worldcoin seeks to combat the growing issue of deepfakes amid the rise of artificial intelligence by launching a digital identity protocol on top of Ethereum. Users are issued a World ID after verifying their identity via a retina scan to verify they are a unique human being who has not previously been issued a World ID.

Although the use of retina-scanning technology has elicited suspicion from many onlookers, Worldcoin immediately deletes retina images once an iris code has been created by default. However, users can opt into Worldcoin’s data custody program to bypass the need to reverify their World ID through future iris scans.

The project issued 25 WLD tokens to each World ID recipient, with Worldcoin Orb operators conducting iris scans for users also receiving WLD tokens. The 25 WLD compensation equated to roughly $60 until December, when an initial rally pushed from roughly $2.50 to trade within a range between $3.50 and $4. Based on current prices, 25 WLD is worth around $170.

The lure of free money led to Worldcoin growing in popularity among emerging countries last year, with Worldcoin claiming to have issued millions of World IDs so far.

However, the project has encountered issues with national regulators on multiple occasions, with the Hong Kong Privacy Commissioner’s Office launching investigations into Worldcoin potentially violations to its Privacy Ordinance in late January, and Worldcoin pausing World ID verification in Kenya in August following pressure from local regulators.