The World Foundation completes a strategic sale of $52.5 million in tokens, led by Pantera Capital.

Written by: Nicky, Foresight News

On July 24, the nonprofit organization behind the World Protocol, the World Foundation, announced the completion of a strategic sale of $52.5 million in WLD tokens, led by Pantera Capital, with participation from Bain Capital Crypto, WLD Treasury company Eightco Holdings, Selini Capital, and Susquehanna Crypto. All sold tokens are subject to a one-year lock-up period.

According to on-chain analyst Yu Jin's monitoring, the World Foundation sold 217.4 million WLD tokens to the aforementioned institutions approximately 8 hours before the announcement, with a transaction price of about $0.24 based on the financing amount, reflecting a discount of approximately 26% compared to the current WLD price. The related tokens have been distributed from the team's wallet to multiple addresses.

According to CoinMarketCap data, the current price of WLD is approximately $0.326, with a circulating market capitalization of about $1.22 billion and a fully diluted valuation of about $3.24 billion, ranking 47th in market capitalization. The token previously reached a high of $11 in March 2024, and the current price has fallen about 97% from $11.

This marks the World Foundation's second large-scale token sale recently. On March 28 of this year, the World Foundation disclosed that its subsidiary World Assets, Ltd. completed a total of $65 million in over-the-counter sales within a week with four trading partners, with an average price of approximately $0.2719 per token, of which $25 million worth of tokens have a 6-month lock-up period. After completing both sales, the total raised amount for the World project has reached approximately $492.5 million.

The World Foundation stated that the WLD tokens sold this time are intended only for use within the World Network ecosystem and do not represent equity interests in the for-profit company behind the project, Tools for Humanity. The funds raised will be used to promote World ID technology to businesses, individual users, and AI entities. The core product of World, World ID, proves a user as a real human through a one-time Orb biometric verification without revealing their identity.

On July 25, the World project celebrated its third anniversary and announced the entry into the third phase of its foundational roadmap "Simple Plan," with the goal of promoting human verification technology to a broader range of application scenarios, including consumer platforms, enterprise clients, and AI entities. The project team stated that World ID has infiltrated critical aspects of daily digital interactions, such as verifying the real identities of all participants in Zoom meetings, ensuring matches on Tinder happen between real people, and allowing concert tickets to flow to fans rather than bot ticket-buying programs.

Official data shows that the World Network currently covers over 39 million users globally, with more than 18 million having completed Orb verification and integrations completed with platforms such as Zoom, DocuSign, Okta, Vercel, and Tinder.

The World project was originally named Worldcoin, co-founded in 2019 by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Alex Blania, Max Novendstern. In October 2024, the project was officially renamed World Network and launched the World Chain mainnet, under the new brand consisting of three core pillars: WorldChain, World ID, and Worldcoin. According to DefiLlama data, the current total locked value in WorldChain is approximately $317 million.

Recently, World has been active in the capital markets. On July 21, Grayscale submitted a registration statement for a Worldcoin ETF to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, which will hold WLD as a passive investment tool, set to trade on Nasdaq if approved, with BNY Mellon serving as the transfer agent and BitGo Bank & Trust as the custodian. On June 23, Robinhood listed the WLD token. Moreover, WLD Treasury company Eightco Holdings will change its Nasdaq stock code to "ORBS" in September 2025, having previously announced completion of $250 million in private placement financing for starting the WLD treasury strategy.

In terms of technical progress, World ID 4.0 officially introduced a fee system on April 17, allowing credential issuers and protocol layers to charge fees for using Proof of Human credentials, while keeping the end-user completely free. This mechanism aims to create sustainable revenue for the World Protocol, forming a positive growth cycle.

The project also faces regulatory and compliance challenges during its advancement. On June 25, Business Insider reported, citing informed sources, that Tools for Humanity initiated two investigations last year, led by external law firms, targeting allegations of executive fund misappropriation and regulatory violations in the Thailand business. Related executives are accused of approving payments of millions of dollars to a foreign company, not for ordinary commercial procurement but to artificially inflate the WLD market price. Additionally, the company's Thai partner has been identified as an internationally wanted fraud suspect. Regulatory bodies in multiple countries have also raised serious concerns about Tools for Humanity's iris scanning and data collection methods.

In the crypto community, some investors view WLD as an alternative speculative target prior to OpenAI's IPO, believing holding WLD corresponds to an indirect bet on Sam Altman's future landscape. This sentiment sometimes reflects in the secondary market, with significant developments at OpenAI often driving short-term fluctuations in WLD. Despite the market frequently linking World to OpenAI due to Sam Altman's personal involvement, the two are completely independent legally, financially, and operationally, with no cross-shareholding or parent-subsidiary relationship.