A plunge of over 97% continues to unlock, yet WLD has completed $65 million in over-the-counter financing: who is still footing the bill?

Original Title: “OTC Financing of $65 Million, Is World Deep Bear Holding Back Big Moves?”

Original Author: Ma He, Foresight News

On March 28, the World Foundation announced that it has completed an OTC sale of WLD tokens totaling $65 million, with an average transaction price of $0.2719. This transaction involved four counterparties, with the first settlement completed on March 20, 2026, where $25 million worth of WLD tokens has a 6-month lock-up period. The official statement indicated that the funds raised will be directly used for core project operations, R&D investment, Orb hardware manufacturing, and ecosystem development, with all settlements executed through the multi-signature address of World Assets, 0xE797.

In the current deep bear market environment, completing tens of millions of dollars in token transactions is quite rare. The last significant token financing by the World Foundation dates back to May 2025, when its subsidiary World Assets sold $135 million worth of WLD tokens at market price to early supporters a16z and Bain Capital Crypto.

Looking back at the complete trajectory of WLD in this cycle, it is a textbook case of moving from frenzy to reality. In July 2023, Worldcoin (now renamed World) officially launched WLD, quickly becoming the market focus due to Sam Altman's personal endorsement, the AI large model boom, and the unique narrative of "proof of human uniqueness."

In March 2024, resonating with the Bitcoin halving cycle and AI concepts, the price of WLD skyrocketed in a single month, reaching a historical high of about $11.8, with its market cap briefly approaching $10 billion. That year, global users registered for World ID through Orb iris scanning with unprecedented enthusiasm, and the project was seen as the top seed player in Web3 identity infrastructure.

However, after the peak, it quickly fell silent. In the second half of 2024, as the overall crypto market corrected, regulatory scrutiny from the EU and other agencies on biometric data intensified, and the project's own large-scale unlocking pressure became apparent, the price of WLD began to plummet.

Throughout 2025, the price of WLD fluctuated between $0.5 and $1.5. Although the adoption rate of iris scanning steadily progressed, it was far from early expectations, and user growth became noticeably disconnected from narrative enthusiasm. Entering 2026, WLD continued to hit new lows, recently touching $0.2433, and currently hovering around $0.27, with a cumulative decline of over 97% from its ATH.

In this cycle, the price trend of WLD resembles the trilogy of most altcoins: concept-driven → supply pressure → practical testing, with early premiums mainly coming from Altman IP and the AI boom, later suppressed by continuous unlocking and macro tightening.

Interestingly, just before announcing the large OTC sale, on March 25, the World official website released a research report titled “Private Proof of Human: Critical Infrastructure for Humanity in a World with Advanced AI,” which directly addresses the core pain points of the AI agent era: how to establish a reliable and privacy-protecting "proof of human" infrastructure in a digital world flooded with machines.

The paper elaborated on the technical solution combining Orb iris scanning hardware with secure multi-party computation (SMPC) and zero-knowledge proof (ZKP), which can efficiently verify human uniqueness while completely avoiding the leakage of personal biometric data, making it more forward-looking and secure than traditional facial recognition or passport verification. This solution is positioned as the foundation of trust for the future internet, effectively combating deep forgery and AI robot attacks.

On March 26, a16z co-founder Marc Andreessen retweeted this paper on the X platform, adding a brief yet weighty comment: It’s time for proof of humanity.

In the current context of AI reshaping productivity, PoH will become essential for distinguishing humans from machines and rebuilding trust in the digital economy.

On March 17, World launched AgentKit, which works by having its agents complete registration through World ID proof, linking wallets with anonymous human identities. The agents sign standard identity verification challenges at protected endpoints, and the agent signatures are matched with their associated human identities. Upon successful matching, access is granted. The official application scenarios indicate that AgentKit agents can also be used for privacy protection, ticketing systems, access frequency limitations, and preventing witch attacks.

On April 17, World will hold the “Lift Off” World ID global launch conference in San Francisco, where Sam Altman will personally attend and co-host with World CEO Alex.

The conference will focus on the latest developments of World ID, Orb hardware iterations, and human verification application scenarios in the AI era. Altman's presence itself symbolizes top-tier traffic and confidence, and is likely to signal potential synergies between OpenAI and World------AI agents need real human identity endorsement, and World ID just provides a decentralized solution.

Currently, WLD has a market cap of $1.346 billion, with an FDV of $2.758 billion, and the proportion of unlocked tokens is 48.80%.

Additionally, WLD still unlocks a maximum supply of 0.05% daily, approximately 5.32 million tokens, worth about $1.479 million. Based on this calculation, the value of tokens unlocked each month is approximately $44.369 million, which is expected to exert significant selling pressure on the market.