World App is the first wallet for the Worldcoin ecosystem, developed by the contributor team at Tools for Humanity. The magic of Ethereum’s composability means that such a simple yet powerful global identity and finance tool, which would normally have required decades to build and thousands of people to maintain, can become a reality today.
How is this possible? Through mixing and matching open protocols and APIs into a seamless, easy to use app. While the ecosystem is continuing to grow and we expect more tools to be developed by other contributors, here’s a look at the protocols World App currently uses to give people around the world access to private digital identity and a new financial system.
WalletConnect: Apps communication
World App lets people hold and use World ID, a unique proof of personhood (PoP) credential that serves as a digital passport online. By connecting their World App to an application, users can prove they are a unique human in a privacy preserving way. This communication is enabled through WalletConnect, a communications protocol for web3 that enables more than 600 wallets and apps to securely connect and interact across the crypto world.
Learn more about WalletConnect.
Uniswap: Buying and selling crypto
World App aims to bring crypto to everyone, including all those who are new to crypto. This is why the app lets people easily buy and sell crypto tokens like Bitcoin or Ethereum while abstracting away technical details that may be daunting for new users.
Token trading is available through the Uniswap Protocol, which provides decentralized finance (DeFi) crypto trading. Among other things, this enables people to swap one crypto token for another without a trusted middleman. In total, more than $1.4 trillion dollars have been traded on Uniswap. On World App, Uniswap can be used when trading digital dollars for Bitcoin or Ethereum, for example.
Learn more about the Uniswap Protocol.
Safe: The wallet
Every World App user receives a smart contract Ethereum wallet deployed on-chain. World App uses smart contract wallets and account abstraction to improve the overall security of the wallet, allowing for granular management today and account recovery in the near future. Beyond that, a smart contract wallet also makes it possible to subsidize gas fees so users don’t have to pay for gas on blockchain transactions. The deployed wallet is self-custodial, which means only the person who owns it has control over it.
Under the hood, this smart contract wallet uses Safe{Core}, an account abstraction stack by Safe. Safe is a decentralized custody protocol that has been established as a security standard across web3. More than $60 billion dollars are stored in Safe accounts, and the protocol is decentralized, open source and has been audited multiple times.
To date, the World App is the largest deployer of Safe wallets on the Polygon blockchain. See the stats here.
Polygon: Blockchain
The World App beta is deployed and operational on Polygon. Polygon allows for scalability and lower transaction costs that could be prohibitive on the main Ethereum blockchain, yet it still leverages the security properties from the main Ethereum blockchain.
Optimism: Blockchain
As World App scales even more and thanks to the work of the community in the Ethereum Improvement Proposal 4844 (EIP-4844), World App will be able to run in its own rollup in the future. This means that World App transactions will run on their own chain, while still leveraging the security that Ethereum offers.
In preparation, World App will be launched on Optimism's OP Mainnet, a layer 2 rollup that benefits from the security of Ethereum, while reducing its costs and latency. You can learn more about Worldcoin’s commitment to the Superchain vision in this blog post.
MoonPay and Ramp: Deposits and withdrawals
Depositing and withdrawing money into the World App wallet lets people easily build a crypto portfolio and savings. It also allows them to withdraw crypto assets into regular currencies (called fiat currencies) via bank account, credit card or debit card. Two partners that enable this in World App are Ramp and MoonPay, together active in over 160 countries worldwide.
MoonPay is a leading web3 infrastructure company building end-to-end solutions for payments, custody, design and minting. MoonPay is trusted by hundreds of partners, including leading wallets, exchanges and commercial brands.
Ramp is a financial technology company offering non-custodial, full-stack payment infrastructure designed to reduce complexity and friction for hundreds of partners and millions of users worldwide.
Learn more about Ramp and learn more about MoonPay.
ENS: Transfers
One of the biggest benefits of crypto is that it enables global, affordable and nearly-instantaneous digital money transfers. This is particularly beneficial for international transfers that usually carry hefty fees. With Ethereum Name Service (ENS), people can easily send money to friends and family by using easy to remember and identify names instead of long wallet addresses or bank accounts. ENS makes it easy to have profiles in the crypto space similar to those currently used on social media.
Peer-to-peer payments on World App support ENS usernames for friendlier ERC-20 transfers.
Circle: Digital dollars
Holding digital dollars (and other stablecoins in the future) is a central feature of World App. Users can deposit and withdraw digital dollars (also called USDC) and then use those digital dollars to buy crypto. In World App, always-on access to digital dollars is powered by Circle.
Circle is regulated as a licensed money transmitter under U.S. state law. USDC is always redeemable 1:1 for U.S. dollars, and its reserves are held in the management and custody of leading US financial institutions like BlackRock and BNY Mellon.
Alchemy: Chain communication
A blockchain is a decentralized ledger of information. To interact with it, World App uses Alchemy, a web3 development platform providing powerful tools to easily build and scale dapps and powering over $100 billion in transactions. All crypto transactions from the World App are sent to Alchemy to be processed on-chain.
Download and learn more
World App, built and serviced by Tools for Humanity, is available in Google Play or the App Store. World App provides access to World ID, a proof-of-personhood protocol offered by the Worldcoin Foundation.
You can join the Worldcoin conversation on Twitter/X, Telegram, Discord, YouTube and LinkedIn, and sign up for the Worldcoin blog newsletter at the bottom of this page to stay up to date on the protocol’s latest developments.
Disclaimer
The above content speaks only as of the date indicated. Further, it is subject to risks, uncertainties and assumptions, and so may be incorrect and may change without notice. A full disclaimer can be found in our Terms of Use and Important User Information can be found on our Risks page.
* Worldcoin tokens are not intended to be available to individuals or companies who are residents of, or are located, incorporated or have a registered agent in, the United States or other restricted territories.