World, the biometric ID verification project co-founded by Sam Altman, released the newest version of its app today, debuting several new features, including an encrypted chat integration and an expanded, Venmo-like capability for sending and requesting crypto.
World was created by the startup Tools for Humanity in 2019, and originally launched its app in 2023. The company says that, in a world roiled by AI-generated digital fakery, it hopes to create digital “proof of human” tools that can help separate the humans from the bots.
During a small gathering at World’s headquarters in San Francisco on Thursday, Altman and World’s co-founder and CEO, Alex Blania, briefly introduced the new version of the app (which developers have termed a “super app”) before the product team took over to explain the new features. During his remarks, Altman said that the concept for World grew out of conversations he and Blania had had about the need to create a new kind of economic model. That model, based around web3 principles, is what World has been trying to accomplish through its verification network. “It’s really hard to both identify unique people and do that in a privacy-preserving way,” said Altman.
World Chat, the app’s new messenger, seems designed to do just that. It uses end-to-end encryption to keep users’ conversations safe (this encryption is described as being equivalent to Signal, the privacy-focused messenger), and also leverages color-coded speech bubbles to alert users to whether the person they’re talking to has been verified by World’s system or not, the company said. The idea is to incentivize verification, giving people the power to know whether the person they’re talking to is who they say they are. Chat was originally launched in beta in March.
The other big feature reveal on Thursday was an expanded digital payment system that allows app users to send and receive cryptocurrency. World app has functioned as a digital wallet for some time, but the newest version of the app includes broader capabiliti …