Sam Altman’s blockchain project ‘World Chain’ opens to developers

2 months ago 38

Ryan Daws is a senior editor at TechForge Media with over a decade of experience in crafting compelling narratives and making complex topics accessible. His articles and interviews with industry leaders have earned him recognition as a key influencer by organisations like Onalytica. Under his leadership, publications have been praised by analyst firms such as Forrester for their excellence and performance. Connect with him on X (@gadget_ry) or Mastodon (@gadgetry@techhub.social)

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman’s Worldcoin project has launched a developer preview of World Chain, a new blockchain that claims to prioritise humans and scale with the growth of the Worldcoin ecosystem.

World Chain – built on the OP Stack and integrated with the Worldcoin protocol – aims to provide developers with access to over 10 million users across 160 countries who are using compatible wallets, starting with the World App.

With the developer preview, the Worldcoin Foundation is inviting a limited number of participants to explore, build, and test on the platform before its mainnet launch. This preview phase is crucial as it allows developers to set up their deployments ahead of the expected migration of users from OP Mainnet to World Chain later this summer.

The blockchain is positioned as a Layer 2 solution secured by Ethereum and engineered for scalability within the Superchain ecosystem. It introduces several key features, including the use of Reth, a high-performance Ethereum execution client developed by Paradigm, which will operate in shadow mode during the preview—a first for Optimism.

Thibaut Sahaghian, Head of Network at Safe, said: “We are dedicated to achieving self-custodial ownership for every human, and we’re thrilled to support World Chain with Safe’s advanced smart account infrastructure.”

Ryan Wyatt, Chief Growth Officer at Optimism Unlimited, added, “The launch of World Chain’s developer preview marks a significant step forward, enabling Worldcoin’s developers to leverage the power of the OP Stack to build ambitious applications, further enhancing the Superchain’s impact.”

World Chain’s development is driven by the need to address scalability challenges faced by the rapidly growing Worldcoin network. Currently, Worldcoin user transactions account for about 50% of OP Mainnet’s activity, sometimes rising to over 80% during peak periods. To tackle this, World Chain will launch with a block gas target set to 10,000,000, effectively doubling the processing capacity compared to OP Mainnet.

However, the Worldcoin Foundation acknowledges that this is just the beginning.

With over 10 million people already having created a World ID and compatible wallet, resulting in over 100 million transactions, the network’s demands are expected to grow significantly. The foundation and other contributors are committed to further optimisations, aiming to achieve 1,000 million gas per second (1GGas/s) – a 400x increase over the current OP Mainnet target.

Georgios Konstantopoulos, General Partner & CTO at Paradigm, commented: “We are thrilled to help enable World Chain’s scaling roadmap with Reth, an SDK for building production-ready, high-performance blockchains.

“We look forward to working hand-in-hand with the Worldcoin Foundation, TFH, OP Stack and the rest of the community during the World Chain developer preview to achieve the ambitious mission of breaking through the 1GGas/s barrier and beyond.”

World Chain is supported by partners including Alchemy, Safe, and Elliptic, with more partnerships expected to be announced in the coming weeks. The blockchain will also be one of the first to launch as a Stage 1 rollup, incorporating a fault proof system to enhance security and integrity.

Developers interested in participating in the World Chain preview can apply for access through the Worldcoin Foundation’s website. The full public launch of World Chain is expected later this year, marking a significant milestone in the Worldcoin project’s mission to create a blockchain ecosystem centred on human identity and accessibility.

(Image Credit: Worldcoin / Marc Olivier Le Blanc)

Want to learn more about blockchain from industry leaders? Check out Blockchain Expo taking place in Amsterdam, California and London. The comprehensive event is co-located with other leading events including Digital Transformation Week, IoT Tech Expo, Edge Computing Expo, Intelligent Automation, AI & Big Data Expo, and Cyber Security & Cloud Expo.

Explore other upcoming enterprise technology events and webinars powered by TechForge here.

Tags: blockchain, coding, Developers, ethereum, layer 2, layer two, op stack, optimism, programming, reth, sam altman, web3, world chain, worldcoin