Sam Altman’s blockchain venture, World Network, breaks into the Messaging game with its latest feature: World Chat.
The new feature, a “Mini App” available through the World App Wallet, will offer special features to holders of the World Network’s Digital Passport, which lets users scan their iris in exchange for an account that verifies their “proof-of-personhood.”
World Chat is the latest iteration of the world’s ongoing quest to help people distinguish bots from people of AI’s age. “By connecting to World ID, World Chat allows you to know when you chat with a verified human being,” the World Developer Tools for Humanity said in a statement to Coindesk.
Those who have not looked into the world’s iris-scanning ORB will still have access to the new chat feature. The new messaging app takes design signals from Apple’s iMessage, using blue chat bubbles for iPhone users and green bubbles for everyone else. “Conversations with verified world -ID holders have a blue chat bubble as well as a unique world -id -pearl in the upper right corner,” explained tools to humanity. “Conversations with non-verified accounts have a gray chat bubble and no such pearl.”
The Mini apps were launched back in October 2024, and there were more than 250 million mini apps opened in the first two months of 2025, according to Tools for Humanity.
“The World app has grown so much in the past year, we have continuously heard requests for a DMS layer. And we think that for some actions like sending money, it’s just far more natural and fun than going to a wallet and sending a transaction, ”Tiago Sada, the product manager at Tools for Humanity, told Coindesk. “People have asked for the chat product specifically.”
World Chat will be available on the World app for Android and iPhone iOS users starting Thursday.
In addition to World Chat, World and Social Protocol friends with Benefits with Alchemy, Bain Crypto Capital, Blockchain Capital and Variant Fund to launch an incubator program called World Build. The program includes hackathons, construction of withdrawals and a demo day and is intended to encourage developers to build “Mini apps.”
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