Worldcoin, Now Valued at $1B, Has Grand Plans to Get You to Gaze Into the Orb

Would you let a chrome, volleyball-sized sphere scan your retinas in exchange for crypto?

That’s the interesting – and controversial – premise behind Worldcoin, a new project co-founded by former Y Combinator President Sam Altman.

Depending on whom you ask, Worldcoin’s plan might sound futuristic and cool, a little silly, or like a dystopian nightmare ripped from science fiction. When news of the project leaked to Bloomberg in June, the media response was critical.

Silicon Valley, however, is excited about the project.

Worldcoin announced Thursday it raised $25 million from investors including Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), Coinbase Ventures, Digital Currency Group (the parent company of CoinDesk) and angel investors including crypto billionaire Sam Bankman-Fried and Reid Hoffman, the co-founder of LinkedIn. The company is currently valued at $1 billion.

According to some of the company’s prediction models, Worldcoin thinks over a billion people will have gazed into the Orb by 2023.

According to Worldcoin, 130,000 people around the world have already gazed into the Orb in a crypto twist on universal basic income (UBI).

Blania told CoinDesk the amount each person receives depends on how early in the project’s roll-out they got involved, with the amount diminishing as more people are onboarded, but that the amount is roughly valued at between $10 and $200. This amount is doled out over two years, with 10% available immediately in a wallet app generated by the Orb.

Worldcoin, which is built as a layer 2 system that works on the Ethereum network, has a cap of 10 billion worldcoins. Blania told CoinDesk that 8 billion of those will be distributed globally – the company’s stated goal is to give worldcoin to “every human on earth” – while 2 million worldcoin will be reserved for the soon-to-be-set-up Worldcoin Foundation and for investors.

The Orb was designed by Swedish industrial designer Thomas Meyerhoffer, who previously designed for Apple and Porsche.

“It’s the first contact for users, right? So we just wanted to make it really, really cool and really exciting,” Blania said. “And by making it shiny it gets people’s attention and they see their reflection as they stand there … it’s a very cool and memorable [experience].”

Blania also said that rapper Azaelia Banks, who was rumored to be a representative of Worldcoin after the June leaks, is not and has never been affiliated with Worldcoin.