🎖️ ‘Very proud American’

Hey frens. 

It’s Thursday, and there continues to be TONS of news this week. 

Today the big news is about World Network. Like it or hate it, Sam Altman isn’t giving up on World and its coin as the touted solution to all the bot and AI deepfake problems OpenAI helped create. 

The World team at Tools for Humanity is still pushing for everyone to get their eyeballs scanned despite those ideological and biometric data security tussles with regulators around the globe (though it’s only fully banned in Hong Kong right now). We now know what their US plans are.

The eyeball scanning is never not going to feel freaky to me, even if the data is encrypted and deleted from the Orb right after getting scanned. 

Fun fact, though: the US government scans eyeballs, too, and has for years now. I became a US citizen this year, but the green card process can involve getting your irises scanned (and all your fingerprints taken). 

We’re also talking about Alliance DAO’s latest cohort of wacky, promising, and practical startups, and much more.

— Kate Irwin

P.S. Let me know how you’re liking The Drop! Send me an email at [email protected].

Sam Altman’s World launches in US

Worldcoin — usable via the World mobile app — is finally launching in the US and making a big splash with a slew of big integrations.

World cofounder and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman briefly took the stage during the live event Wednesday night and declared: “I am a very proud American.” 

Thanks for that, Sam.

Orbs in America

US residents can now get their irises scanned to claim some WLD tokens as part of an ongoing airdrop. Iris-scanning Orbs are being set up in Atlanta, Austin, Los Angeles, Miami, Nashville and San Francisco to start (sorry, New Yorkers). 

Those in the US who pre-registered for World have also been airdropped 150 WLD, which is about $150.

The for-profit firm Tools for Humanity is the developer of World, and the nonprofit World Foundation is behind the Worldcoin token.

TFH’s goal is to “verify” as many humans as possible and get people set up with World IDs so that humans can discern between AI or bot accounts and real human-run accounts. Users can get verified World IDs by getting their irises scanned by a metallic Orb (if this sounds dystopian to you, you’re not wrong).

The next step in this vision is the Orb Mini, revealed Wednesday night. It looks like an eyephone with Apple Vision sockets on the back, if you ask me:

The Orb Mini’s main purpose is to make scanning people’s irises easier, but at some point, it’s expected to also serve as a point-of-sale terminal.

“We tried everything not to build a hardware device,” said Tools for Humanity CEO Alex Blania on developing the Orb concept. He also noted the company has spent “millions” on developing the Orbs.

The Orb Mini as a point-of-sale would mean you could buy items using just your eyeballs, and the Orb would deduct the amount to be paid from your World wallet. Sounds like a Black Mirror episode — or like Amazon’s pay-with-your-palm thing.

Until that day comes, you can pay for items with a World Visa card instead that pulls directly from your World wallet.

The standard-size Orb has also been updated, which we knew about previously, and they’ve made a point of reminding us there’s an Nvidia chip in there.

Orb manufacturing is being spun up in Texas, too.

World 4.0

The World app received another big update with its 4.0 edition. Verified profile pictures and a Stripe integration are also being added. 

Within the World app, there’s now a prediction markets mini-app called Kalsi available to US residents where users can make predictions with WLD. Morpho, another miniapp, enables DeFi lending for World wallet users to borrow against crypto held in that wallet (Morpho’s also available for the US).

Circle’s USDC is also being added natively to the World app, with plans for a Euro stablecoin to be added at some point.

TFH is continuing its gaming plans with a “League of Humans” tournament with gaming tech firm Razer, will put Orbs in Razer stores, and may add its “Deep Face” tech to Razer webcams for deepfake prevention and human verification. 

During a press conference, the TFH team said South Korea is also a big focus for them because of the country’s strong presence in the gaming world.

World ID badges on Tinder, Hinge, and Match will be piloted in Japan to verify dating profiles in the country.

TFH says there are a total of 26 million World accounts now with 12 million verified users. Over 350 million World crypto wallet transactions have occurred in total.

Despite all this news, the WLD token price didn’t do much — it climbed from about $1.02 at the start of the live event, rose to $1.16, and then fell back to $1.05 by the end of the night.

Not Just Online. Onchain.

From NFTs to prediction markets, loyalty engines to mobile-native wallets, Permissionless IV is where real users meet real products.

And if you’re on the AI frontier? Onchain agents, decentralized GPUs, verifiable training — it’s all here, and it’s all moving fast.

Crypto’s next big unlock isn’t technical — it’s usable. Come build it.

🎟️ Buy Your Tickets  
📅 June 24–26 | Brooklyn

Alliance DAO unveils latest startup cohort

Crypto accelerator Alliance DAO has announced its latest cohort of 20 startups: the ALL14. They received over 1,700 applications this time around. Accepted startups will join the three-month accelerator to further build their businesses. The first two weeks are in-person, and the remaining weeks occur remotely.

Typically, accelerators offer connections, networking, and guidance in exchange for some equity in the startup that is accelerated. This accelerator includes lectures, one-to-one mentorship, weekly check–ins, and a demo day.

Alliance DAO, formerly known as DeFi Alliance, counts other founders, lawyers, liquidity providers, and auditors among its members.

“We only require a $450k investment in your company (at unparalleled, founder-friendly terms). We've learned that our best performing teams actually do want us to have skin-in-the-game,” the group’s website states.

Alliance says its median startup raises $3.5M after the program. VCs like Paradigm, Dragonfly, and Multicoin have invested in Alliance-accelerated startups in the past.

Solana and Ethereum were the most-used chains by startups that applied to ALL14, and Base was the most-used L2.

35% of admitted teams are focused on AI, while 30% are focused on stablecoin innovations, a sign that both are continuing to trend in the startup world.

Alliance’s latest cohort offers an interesting glimpse into the future of crypto, AI, and where things might go from here.

Whet your appetite with some of these names:

• Slop Club 

• Poof

• Wootzapp

Some of the teams’ pedigrees are pretty impressive, though. Think founders that are also Stanford engineers, had stints at billion-dollar firms, or worked at prior startups with top Silicon Valley investors before starting their new thing. 

A list of the crypto-focused:

• 8020 (Moonshot for Asia)

• Zabio (P2P stablecoin exchange for LATAM)

• Lemonade Payments (Crypto payments in Africa)

• Zynk Labs (Instant crypto settlements)

• Fido (DeFi-powered neobank)

• Guess.best (opinion-based betting market)

• Junction (cross-chain DeFi toolkit)

• Ripe (stablecoin payments for Asia)

• Orbit (AI assistant for DeFi trading)

• Poof (vibe coding for dApps)

• Seismic (encrypted blockchain)

• Offline protocol (communication, payments without internet)

• GrandmAIsters (AI agent chess arena game)

• FactCheck (stablecoin-incentivized fact-checking)

Others in the cohort:

• Slop Club (Tiktok for AI videos)

• Freedom GPT (Pagerank for AI)

• Wootzapp (Private data crowdsourcing for AI training)

• Afterschool (AI tutor)

• CollectiveScience (Academic peer review tool)

• CreatorGen (AI avatar marketplace)

Alliance also hosted an IRL event this week:

The application window for the next cohort closes on May 28.

• Gala Games’ The Walking Dead: Empires is shutting down at the end of July. The game was still in open beta.

• The NFT marketplace Hyerspace is shutting down.

• Magic Eden has finally added Avalanche support to its marketplace. It’s overdue, considering others like OpenSea have offered Avalanche NFTs for a while now. 

  • But Avalanche NFTs have never really been a massive market (top Avalanche NFT collection on OpenSea only saw 250 AVAX, or about $5000, in total volume traded in the past month). Avalanche memecoins have seen a lot more volume, though.

• KAI Battle of Three Kingdoms, a fantasy game with crypto elements using SEGA IP, launched on Wednesday. Not sure if this game is going to get traction in the US — it’s not an IP western audiences are familiar with.

• The Sui Play handheld is looking good so far — here’s a look at the upcoming device in action. It’s not just for crypto games, either. You can mix and match your favorite blockchain games with your favorite Steam titles, too, all on one device.

Thinking about this a lot these days: