Sam Altman’s Eyeball-Scanning Crypto Startup Gets a New App Store

Sam Altman’s World is launching a pilot program that will pay developers who create “mini-apps” using its World ID authentication system. Starting April 1 and running for three months, the company will distribute $300,000 to qualifying developers based on usage of their apps, with World saying top-performing developers could earn up to $25,000 per week. Payments are made in the form of World’s own token but can be converted to other currencies.

World, formerly known as Worldcoin, is the company behind a controversial orb-like device that scans a person’s iris to create a unique, encrypted digital code. Once created—you need to physically visit an orb and have your eyeball scanned—the idea is that individuals can authenticate themselves online without needing to hand over any personally identifying information. World sees this as addressing the problem of bots and inauthentic content proliferating online alongside the rise of artificial intelligence. A fix to the problem of bots figuring out how to solve CAPTCHAs.

From a privacy standpoint, World could allow individuals to speak freely on services like X without risking an authoritarian regime finding their identity and sending them to an ICE detention facility. And as humans and bots become nearly indistinguishable, websites like Reddit need a way to combat the junk. States like Utah have demanded that individuals verify their age to access mature apps, which has stoked pushback from privacy advocates, but World ID would not solve that problem, as it only verifies humanness, not age.

World faces a “cold start” problem—in order for people to scan their irises, there needs to be a practical reason for doing so, like an app or service that requires it. But without iris scans, there is no reason for developers to make an app that utilizes them.

World’s first attempt at addressing this was issuing a cryptocurrency to new users. Now, it aims to onboard people with actual utilities. World 3.0, the latest version of its mobile app, is billed as a “super app” akin to WeChat in China, which is ostensibly a messaging app but includes a whole host of other features, like the ability to hail a cab or pay for goods. World now includes Mini Apps, which it defines as “everyday apps optimized for real humans.” They run directly within the World app and integrate with a user’s World ID. There are over 150 mini-apps available today, ranging from games to lending and payment apps.

Business Insider spoke with one developer in Argentina who built a mini app called Credit that offers microloans to individuals in the country. Loans can range from as low as $5 up to $100. Diego Estevez, the developer behind the app, says since World is inherently anonymous, he does not rely on traditional credit scores or other signals to issue loans. Credit is designed so that users can get access to increasingly larger loans as they make on-time repayments. Estevez says Credit has issued 15,000 loans to date.

Getting people in poorer parts of the world online and into financial systems with a verifiable ID is a real problem, but what technology like World has to offer is always a double-edged sword. The company has faced controversy on numerous fronts. It initially launched pilots in developing countries including Kenya and Brazil, where it recruited individuals to collect iris scans in exchange for payment. Critics have said the practice is predatory, as these individuals may be desperate for the money, and regulators in several countries have banned World altogether. Some critics have noted that iris patterns appear to change as people age, posing a problem for World’s biometric scanners.

And fundamentally, in a world where individuals are hyper-aware of privacy concerns, especially as governments increasingly monitor and police online activity, asking for intimate personal data is a hard sell. World faces an uphill battle assuaging concerns that the technology could be abused to track people’s activity and whereabouts. The current Trump administration has demonstrated a willingness to send people to ICE detention camps over lawful speech and will scan online activity to achieve its goals.

What is more, the U.S. government can compel the use of biometrics to unlock devices, like iPhones, using biometric data without violating the Fifth Amendment. Theoretically, it could ask an individual to display their eye and log into X rather than demand a password.

World has been adamant that user biometric data is stored only on an individual’s smartphone, and there is no way to link a World ID back to a person. World ID codes are “zero proof,” meaning the cryptographic hash of a person’s iris can generate a code to use online—i.e. for logging into Reddit—but the code cannot be reversed to generate an iris. The code generated from an iris hash is the same each time, theoretically preventing an individual from creating multiple accounts on the same services.

Whether that is enough to make people comfortable with scanning their eyeballs is yet to be determined. World claims that more than 12 million individuals have created World IDs to date. The company’s orbs have not yet been made widely accessible in the U.S. yet.