World Foundation, Tools For Humanity unveil World Build 2.0
The event, cohosted with FWB, helps devs accelerate their World mini apps and find funding along the way
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman | Saül Gordillo/"altmansam_051623gn13_w" (CC license)
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World Network — known for its eye-scanning orb that verifies human accounts for its mobile super app — is launching the next phase of its developer incentive campaign.
World Network is managed by World Foundation and also involves corporate entities such as World Assets Limited and World Chain LLC. For-profit blockchain product developer Tools For Humanity is overseeing the development of the World app.
Collectively, World Foundation and TFH are working with crypto events DAO FWB to host their next event for builders, World Build 2.0, in July, according to a release Tools For Humanity shared exclusively with The Drop. Tools For Humanity Chief Product Officer Tiago Sada was one of the first edition’s judges.
The first World Build event ran for five months, from February until May this year. It included an online hackathon followed by an in-person build sprint and ended with a demo day, where builders pitched their apps to VCs and threw their hats in the ring for various grants. The second Build event is expected to have a similar format.
There are a number of different funding opportunities for mini app builders regardless of their participation in World Build. World Foundation is offering a Mini Apps Grants Program and Mini App Retroactive Rewards.
TFH’s Dev Rewards Pilot has a total of $300,000 to give developers over a three-month period ending June 30. Rewards of $25,000 a week are split across multiple dev teams depending on mini app performance.
The World Foundation is also giving out $1 million worth of its WLD token to developers who’ve already shipped something for the World app and saw over 10,000 verified human users by May 16 as part of a retroactive funding effort. Devs have until June 9 to apply for that one-time WLD token gift.
There are already 300 mini apps so far available within the World mobile app with roughly $12 million in venture capital funding across them, according to data from Tools For Humanity.
The World app uses the World Network blockchain, which is built on Ethereum via the Optimism Superchain.
Monetization isn’t the main focus of the World Foundation or TFH right now. Instead, they’re pushing for platform growth and user adoption.
The World App has seen over 10 million downloads on Android alone thus far, according to its Google Play Store page.
Based on data from analytics platform AppFigures, it looks like World App for Android is a lot more popular than its iOS version. The Android version has seen over 5.9 million downloads this year alone, while the iOS version has less than a million downloads in that same period.
The top countries downloading World’s Android app this year so far the most are, in order, Indonesia, Colombia, Brazil, Philippines, and Peru. The US is much further down, in the 19th spot. The top countries data for the iOS app paints a similar picture, suggesting it’s a global app that hasn’t quite breached the US market just yet.
This may be because WLD hadn’t been available to US residents previously until a recent change announced April 30.
Last month, World Foundation raised $135 million in funding from a16z and Bain Capital Crypto. The VCs’ investment came in the form of buying WLD tokens.
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