- Worldcoin exchange USDC for WLD as a payment method for orb traders
- The project scans irises on devices called Orb or orbs in exchange for an incentive on WLD
- The news coincided with a 5% drop in the price of WLD
Worldcoin, the controversial and ambitious cryptocurrency project focused on identity verification, will soon stop paying orb traders in the USDC stablecoin and start doing so in its native token, WLD.
In a notice published on Sunday, the Worldcoin Foundation announced the change in the payment mechanism for collaborators in charge of operating the orbs, the devices the project uses to perform eye scans on people around the world.
The measure, which will begin rolling out next month and will exclude users in the United States, will mean an increase in the circulating supply of WLD tokens on the open market. The organization also provided an update on the circulating supply, which has reached more than 1% of its total supply of 10 billion WLD tokens.
Of the approximately 134 million WLD issued, 100 million were provided as loans to market makers, while 34 million were distributed to users and orbit operators in the form of grants.
“The WLD token was launched with a relatively low circulating supply of just over 100 million WLD,” Worldcoin said in the post. “ This was due to the goal of creating a network of as many human beings as possible. To achieve this, the majority of the WLD token supply will be given to new and existing users in the form of user grants in the coming years .”
With the loans set to expire on October 24, Worldcoin announced that the agreements would be renewed until December 15 of this year with a reduced amount of 75 million tokens; market makers will return or alternatively buy some or all of the remaining 25 million as part of the deal.
Worldcoin, the controversial project
Created by Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI (developer of ChatGPT ), Worldcoin is a bold proposal to create a new “everyone-owned” identity solution and financial system powered by retinal scanning.
The goal of the project is for its novel identity system to serve as a kind of digital passport that helps differentiate machines from humans while providing a path toward a universal basic income (UBI) for everyone on the planet. For now, however, these goals seem quite ambitious.
Worldcoin distributes its WLD token to everyone who accesses an eye scanner, that is, everyone who is willing to provide their biometric data. The project has its own devices called Orb or orbs spread around the world to carry out this process. The incentive is 25 WLD or the equivalent of USD $38 based on current prices.
Since its launch in July, Worldcoin has attracted attention and generated a significant level of controversy. Authorities in jurisdictions such as Argentina, the United Kingdom, France, Germany and Kenya have initiated investigations into the project for its processing of user data, and it has even been ordered to suspend operations in some countries.
The news about the change from USDC to WLD for payments by orb operators coincided with a decrease in the price of WLD, which registered losses of almost 5% in the last 24 hours and is trading at USD $1.5 for the moment of edition.
