Original Author: Ma He, Foresight News
On March 28, the World Foundation announced that it had completed an over-the-counter (OTC) sale of WLD tokens totaling $65 million, with an average transaction price of $0.2719. This transaction involved four counterparties, with the first settlement completed on March 20, 2026. Among these, $25 million worth of WLD tokens are subject to a 6-month lock-up period. The official statement indicated that the proceeds will be directly used for the project's core operations, research and development, Orb hardware manufacturing, and ecosystem development. All settlements were executed through the multi-signature address 0xE797 of World Assets.
In the current deep bear market environment, completing a token transaction of tens of millions of dollars is quite rare. The last major token financing by the World Foundation dates back to May 2025, when its subsidiary World Assets sold $135 million worth of WLD tokens to early supporters a16z and Bain Capital Crypto at market prices.
Looking back at the complete price trajectory of WLD in this cycle, it can be described as a textbook case from frenzy to reality. In July 2023, Worldcoin (now renamed World) officially launched WLD. With Sam Altman's personal endorsement, the AI large model boom, and the unique narrative of "Proof of Human Uniqueness," it quickly became a market focus.
In March 2024, driven by the Bitcoin halving cycle and the resonance of AI concepts, the price of WLD surged within a single month, reaching an all-time high of approximately $11.8. Its market capitalization once approached $10 billion. That year, global users showed unprecedented enthusiasm for registering World ID through Orb iris scanning, and the project was regarded as the top contender for Web3 identity infrastructure.
However, after the peak, it soon fell into silence. In the second half of 2024, with the overall crypto market correction, strict scrutiny from regulatory bodies like the EU on biometric data, and the emergence of the project's own large-scale unlocking pressure, the price of WLD began to plummet.
Throughout 2025, the price of WLD fluctuated repeatedly in the range of $0.5 to $1.5. Although the adoption rate of iris scanning steadily advanced, it fell far short of early expectations, and user growth significantly decoupled from narrative hype. Entering 2026, WLD continued to bottom out, recently hitting a new low of $0.2433 and currently hovering around $0.27, with a cumulative decline of over 97% from its all-time high.
In this cycle, the price trend of WLD resembles the trilogy of most altcoins: concept-driven → supply pressure →落地考验 (landing test). Early premiums were mainly driven by Altman's IP and the AI trend, while later stages were suppressed by continuous unlocking and macro tightening.
Interestingly, just before announcing the large OTC sale, on March 25, World's official website released a research report titled "Private Proof of Human: Critical Infrastructure for Humanity in a World with Advanced AI." The article directly addresses the core pain point of the AI agent era: how to establish a reliable and privacy-protecting "Proof of Human" infrastructure in a digital world flooded with machines.
The paper elaborates on the technical solution combining Orb iris scanning hardware with Secure Multi-Party Computation (SMPC) and Zero-Knowledge Proofs (ZKP). This approach not only efficiently verifies human uniqueness but also completely avoids the leakage of personal biometric data, making it more forward-looking and secure than traditional facial recognition or passport verification. This solution is positioned as the future foundation of internet trust, effectively countering deepfakes and AI bot attacks.
On March 26, Marc Andreessen, co-founder of a16z, shared this paper on platform X with a brief yet highly significant comment: It's time to prove human.
In the current era where AI is reshaping productivity, PoH (Proof of Human) will become a necessity to distinguish humans from machines and rebuild the trust layer of the digital economy.
On March 17, World launched AgentKit. Its working principle involves Agents completing registration through World ID proof, linking wallets with anonymous human identities. The agent signs a standard identity verification challenge at a protected endpoint, and the agent's signature is matched with its associated human identity. Access is authorized upon successful matching. The official application scenarios state that AgentKit agents can also be applied to privacy protection, ticketing systems, access frequency limiting, and preventing Sybil attacks.
On April 17, World will host the "Lift Off" World ID global launch event in San Francisco, with Sam Altman personally attending and co-hosting alongside World CEO Alex.
The conference theme focuses on the latest progress of World ID, Orb hardware iterations, and application scenarios for human verification in the AI era. Altman's presence itself symbolizes top-tier influence and confidence and may signal potential synergy between OpenAI and World—AI agents need authentic human identity endorsement, and World ID正好 (just) provides a decentralized solution.
Currently, WLD's market capitalization is $1.346 billion, with an FDV (Fully Diluted Valuation) of $2.758 billion. The proportion of unlocked tokens is 48.80%.
Additionally, WLD continues to unlock 0.05% of the maximum supply daily, approximately 5.32 million tokens, valued at about $1.479 million. Calculated at this rate, the value of tokens unlocked monthly is approximately $44.369 million, which is expected to continue exerting significant selling pressure on the market.
