The remarkable surge exhibited by Worldcoin continues to persist, marked by the revelation that its World App achieved over 1 million daily users in the past week. The project disclosed this milestone via a tweet on February 17th, illustrating a consistent uptrend in daily user numbers since November.
Simultaneously, the price of WLD is soaring, hitting a new peak of nearly $8 not too long ago, before retracting to $6.75. WLD emerged as the top-performing crypto asset in the past week among the top 100, with a remarkable surge of 155% over the past seven days, as per CoinGecko.
 
A New Era In AI
This surge is largely attributed to the impending launch of Sora, an innovative text-to-video AI model by OpenAI, spearheaded by Worldcoin co-founder, Sam Altman. Sora was unveiled on February 15th, a development which further fueled momentum for WLD.
The allure that Worldcoin has when it comes to free tokens unsurprisingly garnered plenty of popularity, particularly in emerging countries last year, with millions of World IDs reportedly issued. Nonetheless, regulatory hurdles emerged, with investigations by the Hong Kong Privacy Commissioner into potential violations of the Privacy Ordinance and Worldcoin halting World ID verification in Kenya under pressure by local regulators.
 
The Controversy Continues
While the rally boosted early investor portfolios significantly, including contentious entities within the Web3 sector, such as Teneo and Alameda Research, it has also raised eyebrows. Worldcoin has stirred controversy since its mainnet launch in July, aiming to address the deepfake issue by introducing a digital identity protocol atop Ethereum. Users obtain a World ID post retina scan verification, ensuring uniqueness and a lack of prior World ID issuance.
Each World ID recipient received 25 WLD tokens, with Worldcoin Orb operators, who conduct iris scans, also receiving WLD tokens. Initially valued at around $60, the 25 WLD tokens surged in value to around $170 at current rates.
Lastly, although the use of retina-scanning technology raises suspicion, Worldcoin assures the deletion of retina images once an iris code is generated, by default. Moreover, users have the option to join a data custody program to avoid re-verification via iris scans. Still, many remain unconvinced that the data is in fact deleted, as other platforms like Discord made similar promises but those turned out to be false.