world 6

mornin' merry makers ☀️👁️🔮⚡🛍️

most of the brands i’ve been writing about this summer have one thing in common: they’re selling nostalgia. bamboo bags that turn you into a real-life bratz doll on vacation. prairie-core dresses that suggest you might churn your own butter on weekends. wellness rituals that allow you to be witchy like your favorite celebrities. they all whisper the same thing: go offline, go slow, go back… for only $400 😏

then i learned about getting “orbed” at world.

this is retail that sells nothing. instead, they literally pay you cryptocurrency to visit their stores and get your eyeballs scanned by volleyball-sized chrome orbs. no products, no receipts, just proof you exist.

the tagline of the company is “the real human network.”

it sounds like black mirror meets an apple store meets a crypto convention. but in a year when ai keeps on getting better at mimicking your voice, your face, and your writing style, suddenly there’s value in proving you are, in fact, you.

so important that world was cofounded by sam altman, the ceo & cofounder of open ai, which created chatgot. world’s v lofty mission is to onboard every person on the planet.

this is the most futuristic “retail” moment of my summer series.

because in the age of ai, being real is the new luxury.

stories i'm watching

the founding vision: world network was founded in 2019 by sam altman, alex blania, and max novendstern with over $250 million backing from andreessen horowitz, khosla ventures, and reid hoffman. they saw the bot problem coming before most of us even knew what ai really was.

name game: originally called "worldcoin," the october 2024 rebrand to "world network" signaled their shift from pure crypto play to identity verification infrastructure. the rebrand also embraced more approachable, whimsical branding instead of the dystopian surveillance vibes you'd expect with another crypto coin.

you’ve made it to the good part 😎