Off-chain financing of $65 million, is Deep Bear preparing a big move?

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Original author: Ma He, Foresight News

On March 28, the World Foundation announced the completion of 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 in WLD tokens has a 6-month lock-up period. The official statement indicated that the funds will be directly used for core project operations, R&D investment, Orb hardware manufacturing, and ecosystem development, with all settlements executed through World Assets’ multi-signature address 0xE797.

In the current 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 to early supporters a16z and Bain Capital Crypto at market price.

Looking back at the complete trajectory of WLD in this cycle, it can be described as a textbook case from frenzy to reality. In July 2023, Worldcoin (now renamed World) officially launched WLD, rapidly becoming a market focus due to Sam Altman’s personal endorsement, the AI large model craze, and the unique narrative of “proof of human uniqueness.”

In March 2024, amidst the resonance of the Bitcoin halving cycle and AI concepts, WLD’s price soared within a single month, reaching a historical peak of around $11.8, with its market cap approaching $10 billion at one point. That year, global user enthusiasm for registering World ID through Orb iris scanning was unprecedented, 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, and regulatory bodies such as the EU imposed strict scrutiny on biometric data, along with the project’s own large-scale unlocking pressure becoming evident, the price of WLD began to plummet.

Throughout 2025, WLD’s price fluctuated in the range of $0.5 to $1.5. Although the growth rate of iris adoption steadily progressed, it was far from early expectations, and user growth showed a clear disconnect from narrative enthusiasm. Entering 2026, WLD continued to hit new lows, recently touching $0.2433, and is currently hovering around $0.27, with a cumulative drop of over 97% from its ATH.

In this cycle, WLD’s price trend resembles the trilogy of most altcoins: concept-driven → supply pressure → practical testing, with the early premium primarily stemming from Altman’s IP and the AI boom, later suppressed by ongoing unlocking and macro tightening.

Interestingly, just before announcing the large OTC deal, on March 25, World’s official website published 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 agency 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 solutions of combining Orb iris scanning hardware with secure multi-party computation (SMPC) and zero-knowledge proofs (ZKP), which can efficiently verify human uniqueness while completely avoiding personal biometric data leakage, being 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 deepfakes and AI robot attacks.

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

In the current era where AI reshapes productivity, PoH will become an essential tool for distinguishing humans from machines and rebuilding the trust layer of the digital economy.

On March 17, World launched AgentKit, which works by having its Agents register through World ID verification, linking wallets with anonymous human identities. The agents sign standard identity verification challenges at protected endpoints, matching agent signatures with associated human identities, and granting access upon successful matching. 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” global launch event for World ID in San Francisco, with Sam Altman personally attending and co-hosting 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 appearance 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 conveniently provides a decentralized solution.

Currently, WLD’s market cap is $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, valued at about $1.479 million. Based on this calculation, the monthly unlocked token value is approximately $44.369 million, which is expected to continue exerting significant selling pressure on the market.