Author: Gu Yu, ChainCatcher

Recently, the human verification network World announced the completion of a $67 million OTC round of financing, marking the first significant OTC financing disclosed in the crypto market since May last year.

A series of product and market developments from World have also been recently announced. On March 18, World launched AgentKit integrated with Coinbase, allowing AI agents to prove their association with verified unique humans when interacting with websites and online services via World ID.

According to reports from The Wall Street Journal this month, World is partnering with a number of well-known companies, such as planning to launch a payment card related to Visa, allowing users holding World ID to use digital assets for consumption. The dating app Tinder is also testing this identity system in Japan to verify that users are real individuals and that their age information is accurate.

The intent behind all these actions is clear: World is attempting to expand more application scenarios for its iris-based verification ID. After rapidly expanding for four years utilizing "regulatory arbitrage," new user growth has nearly stagnated, and the number of World Chain users is scant. The high-value WLD rewards originally used to attract users to register for verification have now become a continuous massive selling pressure.

Even with OpenAI founder Sam Altman at the helm, World still finds it difficult to mask its panic and anxiety. They are urgently in need of a new narrative and practical scenarios to support their multi-billion dollar FDV.

Multiple countries tighten regulation, new user numbers plummet 95%

In contrast to the frequent product efforts, World has continuously faced setbacks on the regulatory front, struggling to expand in the market, with new user numbers plummeting over 95% since October last year.

For a long time, World has viewed emerging markets such as Africa, Latin America, and Southeast Asia as core battlefields. During a window where regulation was not yet perfect, they rapidly expanded through an incentive mechanism of "free token distribution," accumulating over 12 million verified users by May 2025.

However, starting from the end of 2024, several countries began tightening regulations after completing assessments: requiring World to stop iris data collection or delete already collected biometric information. They believe that iris data, as extremely important citizen biometric data, could pose leakage risks, cross-border data flow issues, and unclear data usage due to insufficient data storage and protection mechanisms at World.

In November 2024, Chilean regulators required World and Rappi to stop iris scanning activities in the country; in December of the same year, German regulators ordered WorldCoin to delete human eyeball biometric data; in May 2025, Worldcoin and WorldID-related services were suspended in Indonesia due to suspected violations; in November of the same year, Thai regulators required World to delete over 1.2 million iris scanning data...

Additionally, countries like the Philippines, Kenya, Spain, and South Korea have also introduced similar stringent regulatory measures and fines, significantly obstructing World’s previous market strategies.

At the same time, World is also accelerating its expansion of users into more developed country markets. In May and June 2025, World successively announced the expansion of its World human verification service to the United States and the United Kingdom, which brought several months of significant user growth for World but was not sustainable.

According to Dune data produced by official sources, World saw 20,000 to 40,000 new users daily receiving WLD token rewards from June to September 2025, but this number began to decline continuously since October, recently averaging only 1,000 to 1,500 new users daily.

Source: Dune

Token price drops over 97%, “digital asset treasury” narrative fails

Dune data also indicates that the total number of users who have been verified and rewarded by World is about 16 million, with a total of 820 million WLD rewards distributed to users, of which users have claimed a total of 170 million WLD.

According to official website data, World currently distributes 40 WLD tokens to each individual who has verified their World ID on the Orb, and an additional 20 WLD can be obtained if users verify their passports, with all rewards released monthly within a year. The total allocation is 6 billion WLD, accounting for 60% of the total issuance.

Perhaps due to continuous user selling pressure, coupled with the overall weakening market conditions, WLD has also been recognized as one of the tokens with the largest decline among top projects in the past year, with a cumulative drop of 97.5% since March last year. The significant depreciation of reward value may also lead to a noticeable decrease in World’s attractiveness to new users.

Source: RootData

To this end, World has attempted to purchase huge amounts of WLD through publicly listed companies amidst the wave of digital asset treasuries to provide sufficient support for its price. In September 2025, the US listed company Eightco announced the completion of a $270 million private placement to implement the Worldcoin treasury strategy, and its stock code was changed to ORBS.

Famous VCs such as BitMine, World Foundation, FalconX, Pantera, GSR, Coinfund, Brevan Howard, and Wedbush participated in the investment.

At the beginning of March this year, Eightco disclosed that it currently holds 270 million WLD, 11,000 ETH, and $82 million in cash.

In mid-March, Eightco announced again that it had secured $125 million in new financing commitments, with Bitmine leading the investment with $75 million and ARK Invest committing to invest at least $25 million. At the same time, Eightco announced the completion of its first strategic investment in OpenAI for $50 million, further strengthening its relationship with the World ecosystem.

Source: RootData

However, this series of capital operations has fundamentally failed to reverse the decline in WLD prices. By the end of March, the WLD price had dropped to $0.24, creating a historic low.

With World announcing a new round of OTC financing this time, it unusually did not disclose specific investors, further intensifying market skepticism.

However, World still has the ultimate trump card — Sam Altman. On April 17, World will hold a "Lift Off" World ID global launch event in San Francisco, with Sam Altman co-hosting alongside World CEO Alex.

In the context of multiple pressures from product advancement, user growth, and token prices, can this important helmsman of the AI era bring a turning point for World?

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