Original author: Mahe, Foresight News
On March 28, the World Foundation published an announcement that it has completed an OTC sale of WLD tokens totaling $65 million, with an average transaction price of $0.2719. This transaction involved four counterparties, and the first settlement was completed on March 20, 2026, with $25 million in WLD tokens subject to a 6-month lock-up period. The official statement indicated that the funds raised will be directly used for core project operations, R&D investment, Orb hardware manufacturing, and ecosystem construction, with all settlements executed through the multi-signature address of World Assets 0xE797.
In the current deep bear market environment, completing tens of millions of dollars in token transactions is quite rare. The last significant 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 trajectory of WLD in this cycle, it can be described as a textbook case of a journey from frenzy to reality. In July 2023, Worldcoin (now renamed World) officially launched WLD, quickly becoming the market focus thanks to Sam Altman's personal endorsement, the AI large model boom, and the unique narrative of 'proof of human uniqueness.'
In March 2024, under the resonance of the Bitcoin halving cycle and AI concepts, the WLD price skyrocketed within a month, reaching a historical high of approximately $11.8, and its market cap once approached $10 billion. That year, the enthusiasm for registering World ID through Orb iris scanning among global users was unprecedented, and the project was regarded as the top seed player in Web3 identity infrastructure.
But after the highlights, it quickly fell into silence. In the second half of 2024, as the overall cryptocurrency market corrected, and regulatory bodies like the EU conducted strict reviews of biometric data, along with the project's own significant unlocking pressure, the WLD price began to plummet.
Throughout 2025, the WLD price fluctuated between $0.5 and $1.5. Although the adoption rate of iris scanning steadily advanced, it fell far short of early expectations, leading to a clear disconnect between user growth and narrative hype. Entering 2026, WLD continued to explore its bottom, recently hitting a new low of $0.2433, currently hovering around $0.27, with a cumulative decline of over 97% from its ATH.
In this cycle, the price trend of WLD resembles the trilogy of most altcoins: concept-driven → supply pressure → grounding test, with early premiums mainly stemming from Altman IP and the AI wave, while later being suppressed by continuous unlocking and macro tightening.
Interestingly, just before announcing a large OTC, on March 25, World officially released a research report titled (Private Proof of Human: Critical Infrastructure for Humanity in a World with Advanced AI), which directly addresses the core pain point of the AI agent era: how to establish a reliable and privacy-protecting 'proof of humanity' infrastructure in a digitally saturated world.
The paper elaborates on the technical solution of combining Orb iris scanning hardware with secure multi-party computation (SMPC) and zero-knowledge proofs (ZKP), which can efficiently verify human uniqueness while completely avoiding 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 foundational trust of the future internet, effectively combating deepfakes and AI robot attacks.
On March 26, a16z co-founder Marc Andreessen shared this paper on platform X, adding a brief yet weighty comment: It’s time for humanity to prove itself.
In the current context where AI is reshaping productivity, PoH will become an essential tool for distinguishing humans from machines and rebuilding the trust layer of the digital economy.
On March 17, World launched AgentKit, which works by having its Agent prove registration through World ID, associating the wallet with an anonymous human identity. The agent signs standard identity verification challenges at protected endpoints, matching the agent's signature with the associated human identity, and grants access upon successful matching. The official application scenarios indicate that the AgentKit agent can also be applied to privacy protection, ticketing systems, access frequency limitations, and preventing witch attacks.
On April 17, World will hold the 'Lift Off' World ID global launch event in San Francisco, where Sam Altman will personally attend and co-host with world CEO Alex.
The conference theme focuses on the latest developments of World ID, Orb hardware iterations, and human verification application scenarios in the AI era. Altman's presence itself is a symbol of top-tier traffic and confidence, and it may signal the potential synergy between OpenAI and World—AI agents need real human identity endorsement, and World ID conveniently provides a decentralized solution.
Currently, the market cap of WLD is $1.346 billion, with an FDV of $2.758 billion, and the proportion of unlocked tokens stands at 48.80%.
In addition, WLD continues to unlock a maximum supply of 0.05% daily, amounting to approximately 5.32 million tokens worth about $1.479 million. Based on this calculation, the value of tokens unlocked each month is approximately $44.369 million, which is expected to exert considerable selling pressure on the market.