Worldcoin Announces World Chain L2

Worldcoin, Sam Altman's controversial identity protocol for the age of AI, just announced their upcoming L2 – World Chain. Integrated with the Worldcoin protocol, World Chain aims to reduce the influence of bots, providing priority block space and a gas allowance to World ID-verified users. 

What's the scoop?

• With over 10M people verified across 160 countries, World Chain will start with a strong user base and potentially incentivize more to register their World ID when it launches later this summer.
• World Chain will focus on building two verticals in its ecosystem — DeFi and identity verification apps. Its integration with World ID proves conducive to this, providing sybil resistance to establish additional security for use cases like stablecoins, payments, ramps, lending, and more. 
• Worldcoin user transactions account for ~44% of all OP Mainnet’s activity; World Chain intends to offload this burden from Optimism and give itself a specialized environment conducive to scaling this activity. 
• While surprisingly, ETH will remain the native token, network fees can still be paid in WLD, potentially creating deflationary pressure on the notoriously low-float token.
• Worldcoin promises that, from the beginning, World Chain will be open source, permissionless, and part of the Superchain ecosystem — potentially qualifying projects built on it for future retroactive goods funding. 

Bankless Take:

While the knee-jerk response when we see another L2 is to roll our eyes, World Chain’s focus on incentivizing verified users and building apps for practical use may be enough to give it the authenticity it needs to succeed. Regardless, its specific functionality will give the ecosystem much to think about regarding how to incentivize real users here for things other than just farming.