“Worldcoin” has finally found its home in the bustling world of Layer 2 (L2) after multiple migrations within the Ethereum ecosystem. On the evening of April 17th, Worldcoin, a cryptocurrency project co-founded by Sam Altman, announced the launch of its own Layer 2 network called World Chain. So why did Worldcoin choose to independently build its own blockchain and enter the slightly crowded L2 race?
The Worldcoin protocol has always aimed to become the world’s largest financial and identity network, as well as the most inclusive project. However, if everyone in the world were to easily join, the system would need to have the capacity to support billions of users. From a technical standpoint, no blockchain currently meets the requirements of the Worldcoin protocol.
In late 2020, the Worldcoin team discovered the Hubble project and began implementing a higher-performance sequencer. Hubble’s original design, which incorporates a hybrid zk/optimistic approach, successfully supported early applications developed by the Worldcoin protocol, such as the World App, which expanded to approximately 700,000 users during its alpha phase. However, Hubble’s design proved to be limiting in terms of user and developer experience, as it only allowed for simple transfers and required protocol upgrades to add new transaction types. At this point, Worldcoin users’ demands had expanded beyond simple token holding or sending. The World App began deploying secure accounts for users, providing access to other tokens and enabling gasless meta-transactions. As a result, Worldcoin’s core contributors decided to migrate to the Polygon PoS network, which was the only high-performance and low-cost network within the Ethereum ecosystem at the time.
As time went on, in July 2023, just before the release of the Worldcoin testnet, Worldcoin believed that Ethereum Rollup was mature enough and migrated to the OP mainnet. By that time, the number of Worldcoin users had grown to approximately 2 million. However, with the launch of the project, it became apparent that the entire L2 ecosystem for Worldcoin was still in its early stages, and many areas of the infrastructure stack needed improvement, including the OP mainnet itself, relay infrastructure, and RPC providers.
The migration to L2 also exposed issues with activities on inefficient chains. Additionally, recent L2 activity solicitations resulted in a more than 20-fold increase in L1 gas prices for an extended period of time. Fortunately, Ethereum’s EIP-4844 upgrade, also known as “Dencun,” was released in February 2024, resolving Worldcoin users’ concerns about gas prices. However, EIP-4844 did not address Ethereum’s long-term scalability issues, and the mainnet still needed to undergo a series of long-term improvements such as Danksharding.
Currently, Worldcoin user transactions account for 44% of OP mainnet activity in a month, and this value can rise to over 80% during peak periods, sometimes exceeding the limit. Considering the size and growth rate of the community, it is time for Worldcoin to transition to a dedicated network – World Chain.
World Chain: Scaling Worldcoin and L2
At the moment, meeting Worldcoin’s on-chain demands would require significant improvements to both L1 and L2 over several years. For the Worldcoin Foundation, L2 can serve as a place for experimentation and innovation. On the other hand, onboarding the entire world onto the blockchain is an incredibly challenging task that exceeds the capacity of any single entity. Therefore, Worldcoin has chosen to become part of the Superchain, alongside Optimism, Coinbase, and the wider Ethereum ecosystem, to launch its dedicated L2 network called World Chain.
World Chain is a new blockchain designed for humans and open to everyone. Compared to bots, verified humans will receive priority access to block space and gas subsidies for temporary transactions. Anyone can submit transactions to World Chain, but transactions created by humans will be given priority for faster confirmation times. Developers can build applications on World Chain, reaching millions of real users worldwide.
Additionally, World Chain will deeply integrate with the Worldcoin protocol and leverage World ID for permissionless, open-source goals. The blockchain will eventually be independently governed by the community. According to Worldcoin, a developer preview of World Chain will be released soon, with full deployment expected later this summer.
It is worth noting that World Chain will not attempt to cover all possible blockchain use cases. With the anti-Sybil attack capability of World ID, its goal is to create a decentralized financial and identity application ecosystem focused on everyday practicality. It will be built around Worldcoin, stablecoins, payments, rewards, lending, and exchanges.
World Chain users can choose to verify their addresses as real humans using World ID, enabling them to access priority block space and gas quotas.
World Chain is an OP Stack chain that will focus on scalability. The short-term goal is to significantly increase the gas limit of the L2 blockchain. However, this goal carries certain risks and should not be pursued blindly. Therefore, Worldcoin has decided to proceed in a more secure manner by studying worst-case performance scenarios to meet application requirements.
According to Worldcoin, in addition to improvements at the execution layer, World Chain will explore alternative data availability (DA) layers, including Plasma-like DA layers. While EIP-4844 alleviated the current Ethereum throughput bottleneck, data availability layer issues may arise again in the future if the Worldcoin user base continues to grow. At some point, World Chain may need to switch to an alternative DA layer to achieve further growth without burdening users with high costs.
How does World Chain and the Superchain benefit each other?
Choosing OP Stack is actually a shortcut for Worldcoin. By building a shared standard blockchain software with OP Stack, Worldcoin gains scalability and cost advantages. At the same time, the Optimism ecosystem can benefit from the chain revenue generated by World Chain, which can be used to fund open-source development and other network improvements. This economic model allows the Superchain to achieve self-sustaining network value, benefiting both builders and users.
By joining the Superchain, World Chain can interact with other blockchains such as Base, Mode, OP Mainnet, and Zora. Worldcoin developers can continue to contribute directly to the Ethereum network, and collaborate with the Superchain ecosystem on shared infrastructure. In addition, after the early OP Chains, World Chain also plans to actively participate in the governance of Optimism.
In conclusion, Worldcoin’s core vision is to drive people all over the world onto the blockchain. Based on the expanding World ID digital identity ecosystem, more and more people can contribute to governance, DeFi, social media, gaming, and various aspects of life. The goal of World Chain is to create a scalable and inclusive blockchain future, unlocking on-chain identities and establishing a more equitable digital economy for everyone.