The ambitions of Sam Altman’s crypto project have always been vast. Now, they also include a new blockchain.

‍What’s happening:‍

• Sam Altman co-founded crypto project has rebranded to World and has officially launched their own layer 2 Ethereum blockchain World Chain
  

Why it matters:‍

• World was previously known as Worldcoin, which debuted to major controversy over their iris scanning technology to verify human identity and has faced an consistent onslaught of regulatory pressure from lawmakers in Mexico, Malaysia and Argentina over claims of improperly storing biometric data
  
• World has also debuted their new Orb hardware for iris scans alongside of officially launching World Chain, which has experienced significant technology upgrades and is now powered by Nvidia (NASDAQ: NVDA) hardware
  

By the numbers:‍

• There are currently 15M active users on World
  
• World is currently being used in 161 countries globally and there are more than 840 Orbs actively deployed for human verification
  

Going deeper:‍

• World Chain is an open source blockchain which is aiming to collaborate with crypto developers globally, leveraging both Ethereum and the Superchain to have a scaleable architecture
  
• World Chain has zero gas fees for any user who has been verified through one of World’s Orbs in an effort to reduce the friction of transacting on the blockchain
  
• World has also rolled out grants for developers who are building new crypto applications within the World Chain ecosystem in an effort to accelerate innovation and adoption

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