After three years of trials, with headlines fixating on Worldcoin’s bold hopes, fatal flaws, and straight-up weirdness, the token—additionally named Worldcoin—is launching on Monday via an airdrop to customers who’ve been verified via an orb. Different customers can safe their tokens by downloading the corporate’s app till they get entry to an orb, together with for future airdrops, though the token distribution shall be restricted to sure nations. Customers within the U.S., for instance, usually are not eligible to obtain the tokens amid regulatory uncertainty.

Worldcoin was based in 2020 by Sam Altman, now recognized for his work with the ChatGPT developer OpenAI, and Max Novendstern, who’s now engaged on a separate A.I.-focused funding mission. The principle participant at the moment behind Worldcoin is Alex Blania, a former Ph.D. pupil in theoretical physics who now serves because the CEO of Instruments for Humanity, the guardian group creating Worldcoin till it achieves its purpose of full decentralization.

Worldcoin’s early days centered on its crypto token. By verifying “personhood” via a watch scan on its proprietary orb, customers would obtain the as-of-yet-launched Worldcoin tokens as rewards. The concept was that Worldcoin may create a system the place each international particular person can be onboarded right into a monetary distribution mannequin the place the token may turn out to be a central type of foreign money and be distributed via “common fundamental revenue” applications.

The corporate’s first couple of years have been outlined by obstacles, which Blania attributed to plain beta testing. Media protection highlighted the mission’s slipshod manner of utilizing contractors to seize folks’s iris information with its orbs, in addition to privateness regulation violations and allegations of corruption. Worldcoin, in the meantime, insisted that it was making a particular protocol that safeguarded folks’s biometric information via an advanced mannequin of cryptographic methods.

As a part of the token launch, Worldcoin has migrated its protocol to the Optimism mainnet, a layer-2 blockchain constructed on Ethereum. Instruments for Humanity can also be releasing a Worldcoin white paper.

‘A completely totally different world’

After the November launch of ChatGPT and rising public consciousness of generative A.I.—and the potential threats to employment and on-line identification—Worldcoin started emphasizing its “proof of personhood” system as uniquely able to countering these issues. Instruments for Humanity developed a software program growth package, or SDK, the place different apps may use folks’s World ID—generated after they’re verified by an orb—in lieu of different login credentials, like emails and passwords. Blania and his group of engineers stated Worldcoin’s protocol of iris scans was the one common approach to create a world identification verification system, with the token serving as an incentive mechanism to accumulate customers.

With the launch of the token, Worldcoin enters a brand new section. At present, solely round 150 orbs are operational, and simply 2 million folks have signed as much as the platform—a far cry from the a whole bunch of tens of millions, or billions, that Worldcoin must create significant community results. In an interview with Fortune, Blania stated Worldcoin hopes to have 1,500 orbs operational by the tip of the yr, in addition to develop to new markets, with the launch of the token doubtless driving extra curiosity for sign-ups.

“Common curiosity might be going to be two orders of magnitude increased than it’s now,” he stated. “There’s going to be an outlined worth hooked up to it—it’s simply going to be a wholly totally different world that I believe none of us can really predict.”

The quick impression of the token launch is unclear. Worldcoin is just not launching its token instantly on exchanges like Coinbase or Uniswap, as an alternative airdropping it to customers, who will have the ability to transact with it via crypto wallets. An individual acquainted with the matter told Fortune in March that round 70% of total tokens will go to registrants, with the remaining going to insiders comparable to Instruments for Humanity staff and the agency’s buyers.

However exchanges inevitably will start to checklist it, which is able to create a fiat-driven market, which means Worldcoin could have a real-world worth. Whereas this might create potential fraud points for Worldcoin, comparable to already documented cases of individuals promoting their credentials in order that others may obtain their airdropped tokens, Blania stated that Worldcoin is creating methods for folks to get well and reauthenticate their credentials.

“Each identification system has frauds,” he advised Fortune. “It’s not an precise concern for the system itself.”