World, the iris-scanning identity project co-founded by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, said on July 24 it has entered "Phase 3" of its five-stage roadmap, shifting the network's focus from bootstrapping signups with WLD token rewards to selling proof-of-human verification — including to AI agents acting on behalf of users.
"Three years after launch, World enters Phase 3 of its roadmap, expanding privacy-preserving proof of human to consumer apps, enterprises, and AI agents," the project said on X, three years after Worldcoin's July 2023 debut.
In a blog post outlining the transition, World said it has issued more than 18 million human credentials and enabled more than 450 million uses of World ID. Phase 3, defined in the project's founding framework as reaching "critical scale and initial utility," follows the release of World ID 4.0, which World describes as enterprise-ready infrastructure that lets developers issue additional credentials using zero-knowledge proofs.
The most consequential expansion targets AI agents. World said traffic from agents and agentic browsers grew 7,851% year over year in 2025, and that agents now browse, execute workflows, and complete purchases through the same interfaces as humans.
