Worldcoin to have its own Layer 2 blockchain called World Chain

Sam Altman's Tools for Humanity, the chief developer behind the Worldcoin WLD -0.36% project, announced it will release its own Layer 2 blockchain to improve efficiencies as it onboards new users.

The new Layer 2, called World Chain, will be secured by Ethereum, the company said in a statement. Additionally, users who have been verified as human will "enjoy priority blockspace over bots and some free gas," Tools for Humanity also said.

Altman, CEO of the high-profile artificial intelligence company OpenAI, is also co-founder of Tools for Humanity. The Worldcoin project is dedicated to assigning people World IDs after they prove they are human with an iris scan. People who sign up are given cryptocurrency in the form of WLD tokens.

The vision behind the Worldcoin project revolves around the idea that the future health of the internet will require a system that parses human from non-human actors.

World Chain is meant to "increase capacity so new people can continue to join at scale, and existing users can enjoy faster, cheaper, and more reliable transactions," according to the statement. The new Layer 2 should be out this summer, said Tools for Humanity.

Worldcoin has signed up more than 5 million people, according to its website.