AI has happened so much faster than I
thought it was going to by now that the
need for something like world feels
especially strong. Clearly the world is
getting close to very powerful AI, but
I'm sure many of you have started to
have an experience more and more where
you're like, am I am I interacting with
an AI or a person or how much of each
and how do I know? I I had this like
weird experience recently where I I I
realized that using like Reddit or
something like that, I couldn't tell
anymore which comments were real and
which were written by AI. I would love
to be able to use a product like Reddit
and really know who the people are.
World is now on the way to being a real
human network for the internet. We can
increasingly tell we're seeing this now
and now with what you all and others are
building. People are really going to
need this. Pantera Capital joined World
for its lift-off event last week. We
believe World is at an inflection point
in its story as people begin to truly
appreciate how important this technology
is. We had the chance to sit down with
Sam Altman for a conversation about the
intersection of blockchain and AI. Later
in the video, Mason Nystrom and I sit
down to discuss some of the compelling
use cases that led Pantera to invest in
World and why we believe proof of human
is so important. Clearly the world is
getting close to very powerful AI and
this is doing a lot of wonderful things.
We're going to see this play out in all
of the ways we dreamed, many we didn't.
Um but we are also heading to a world
now where
there's going to be more stuff generated
by AI than by humans.
And I think there's a ton of reason for
optimism for this new world. Clearly we
care more about humans than we care
about AI, but I'm sure many of you have
started to have an experience more and
more uh where you're like, am I am I
interacting with an AI or a person or
how much of each and how do I know? And
we are so hardwired to care about people
uh that I'm not afraid for the future as
long as we can tell.
So
years ago we started thinking about what
we would need to have proof of human in
a world with advanced AI in it. What it
was going to be like when the internet
had way more AI uh agents, you know,
writing comments or making posts or on
social networks or interacting on
commerce uh flows or whatever else
um than than it did people. And we
really wanted to make sure that the
world continue to be about people, for
people, that people were still the
primary
thing that we all care about, which we
knew was going to happen no matter what
else happened with AI. We are so
hardwired for that. We just wanted to
figure out how to make it easier.
Uh Alex and I and the team started
thinking about ideas for how this could
happen uh and then AI has continued to
go like this.
And
World is now on the way to being a real
human network for the internet. I don't
think we know yet exactly all the ways
that's going to be important, how that's
going to work, what people are going to
do with that, but we can increasingly
tell we're seeing this now and now with
what you all and others are building. Um
people are really going to need this and
really going to need to do this in a
privacy-preserving way. So World ID is
our effort at that and it's been amazing
to see the progress over the last year
as people have adopted this and figured
out how to integrate this into a new
world of AI.
And our goal is to make World ID be this
new proof of human for the internet.
Sam, thanks for joining us.
>> Absolutely.
>> We're excited to be investors in World
and think you guys are doing really
great things. There's always been a lot
of advancements in AI over the last few
years and that has crowded out a little
bit all the fundamental developments we
are seeing elsewhere. How is your view
of how blockchain has evolved and how
maybe that intersects with AI? I don't
view it as crowding out. I think AI will
like lift everything up. Uh I don't know
what all the most important pieces will
be, but clearly agents are going to need
to be able to pay each other and move
money around in all sorts of ways and
that's one of the things I'm personally
most excited about. Obviously everything
we're doing at World.
What are the use cases that you are most
excited about World ID, like seeing
World ID being used in and like where
could it be the most impactful? I mean
you mentioned Reddit, that's a great
example.
I am most excited to see the kind of
creative energy unfurl. I d- I don't
know like I have my own set list of
things like that. I mentioned one. Uh
clearly there's a lot of stuff around
payments and how access to AI compute
may go, but I'm most excited to just see
what the creative world thinks of here.
I feel like this concept of identity has
become much more clear now than it was
certainly if many years ago when you
guys first ideated this. How has that
view of like what like what World ID is
trying to accomplish change or maybe
hasn't changed? I think a lot of the
core ideas have stayed exactly the same,
but the
exact ways in which this is going to be
important, like you know, eight years
ago we didn't know language models were
going to be the thing for example. We
knew that somehow you want to be able to
identify people um and that there was
going to be a lot of AI in the world and
a lot of people in the world, but the
the specifics of like where you're going
to most feel it breaking in the current
system, that wasn't so obvious. Like how
fast do you think World ID can really
catch on? It does feel like it is the
moment for something like identity. A
lot of people are talking about it. Just
how fast and how large of a scale do you
think this could be?
I think the scale can be absolutely
huge. How fast? You know, I I assume it
will continue to scale over a number of
years to get to like a real significant
fraction of the internet. Um these
things always almost always take longer
than you think, but the the trajectory
of it seems really good.
>> Well, we're really excited to be part of
this. We're really excited about what
we're trying to accomplish at World and
so thank you for for the time and the
work. Really happy we could talk. Yeah,
thanks, Sam.
We've heard a lot about the builder
perspective of World, but I think it'd
be great to touch on the investor
perspective.
Uh Pantera, we are investors in World.
Uh maybe frame up why we're excited
about World and you know, what led what
catalyzed that initial investment. Well,
I think let's start big picture and and
and think about what the problem really
is, problem state really is.
We are rapidly entering a world where
there's going to be infinite
AI-generated content, infinite AI
identities in a world that is
increasingly digital. And in that world
we will want to know what is truly human
or not. And the only way to do that is
with some sort of
cryptographic cryptographic secure,
verifiable, censorship-resistant layer
called and proof proof of human and it
turns out that blockchain's actually a
really good way to to do that. Uh and so
that's why proof of human exists and
that's why World exists and um if you
know, this sounded kind of crazy a few
years ago when they I mean when they
started eight years ago, it was truly
crazy. Like no one could really see that
happening, but Sam Altman had the vision
that he saw what OpenAI was probably
building towards and that actually
proof of human was really necessary as a
complementary technology to that. Right.
AI is this technology of abundance as
you mentioned and World provides this
element of scarcity to actually verify
human identity, this this idea of proof
of personhood. I think it's maybe uh
sometimes hard to understand like how
many ways that can impact the world. Uh
talk about some of the use cases that
really shows like the scale of how
something like proof of personhood can
be useful.
So I'm a uh consumer internet tech
investor by training and so the the
biggest TAM that everyone's always
talking about is advertising. All right,
advertising was driven tremendous growth
out of Google, Facebook, now Meta and
now, you know, Amazon and even OpenAI
really that's that's what's going to
drive a lot of growth. Uh because you
know, advertising is effectively in many
ways you can think of it as 20% of GDP.
Uh retailers or you know, businesses are
willing to spend up to 20% of revenue to
get customers. So that's advertising. Uh
today it's about a you know, the
measurable advertising, digital
advertising a half trillion dollar
industry. And when I think about what
you know, what the details of what
advertisers buy is they buy impressions,
right? They're trying to get impressions
that are valuable that hopefully convert
into some action they care about, which
is you know, purchasing something. And
um advertisers will pay will they pay a
lot for better targeting. And so you can
imagine a world where if there's
infinite AI bots
crawling your website, like you don't
want to pay for an impression that's
going to a bot. You want to pay for an
impression that's actually viewed by a
human. And so you can imagine a CPM, you
know, CPMs are something like 15, 20
bucks on the open web.
I don't know, probably could be 30
bucks, 40 bucks we knew it could be 50
bucks, right? And so you you immediately
realize that wow, like proof of human
could be applied towards one of the
largest industries, this half trillion
dollar industry and maybe it's 5, 10%
capture of that. You know, there are
other use cases that are
uh that haven't historically been
monetized, but may become new use cases.
You know, if you think about it from
uh from dating apps, right? There the
what there was a dating app today that
dating app called match.com, which is
the largest runner runner of dating
apps. Um they announced last year their
first partnership with OpenAI around
Tinder.
Uh and
uh in order so that, you know, kids
can't get catfished, right? And that's
you know, it's like kind of funny, haha,
but actually it's a really serious
issue. And um it's actually really
valuable especially because people pay
on these dating apps to meet other
people and so why why not pay to make
sure you're meeting a real human. Uh
other use cases like government
services, you can imagine, you know, in
the future most of our government
services are probably going to be
digital. That's probably even how we get
distributed uh you know, social security
or other insurance benefits. And they
need to be able to verify that they're
not getting their their their not
getting the government's not being
scammed and delivered to real verifiable
humans. And so there are just so many
surface areas that this primitive um
clearly addresses, but also potentially
opens up. Right. And this primitive also
has the potential to evolve. When we
think about what makes you a digital
human today, it's maybe your username,
it's your email, it's your phone number,
maybe like your government ID. But if
you have this actual, you know, verified
human identity, you can start to tie it
to other credentials. And so maybe as
you think of kind of the the grandest
framing and scale, this can can be, you
know, a proof of person for for the
world, uh but that can expand to other
types of credentials or ways that, you
know, we think of ourselves as human.
Oh, completely. I think uh
the
uh this this concept of identity is just
becoming more and more important and
there are many ways to layer on
different types of identity, right? And
so, Proof of Humanity is the is is is a
great substrate on which you can apply
other forms of verification or
licensing. Like, you will want to know
that I have a driver's license, maybe,
but maybe you can append that to your
your Proof of Humanity. You will want to
know that you're you know, some some
employers will want to know that you're
educated in XYZ place. Maybe you can
append that credential to your Proof of
Humanity. That way you know that you
know, this human is it there is a real
human, he's authentic that he's
authentic and he that he indeed went to
these schools. And you can verify that
with, you know, with the school. And and
so, uh there there just there there
clearly a lot of ways that we've thought
about that that we've taken identity for
granted in the physical world, right?
Because we we see people, we we we speak
to them in person. As we move more
digital, this concept of identity and
the value of a digital identity is only
going to increase. Right. And same as we
move towards a world where we're using
agents on a more daily basis,
the idea that there's actually even a
human behind that agent becomes
increasingly valuable.
>> That's right. And by the way, that's
this not to stop agent of commerce in
any way. It's In fact, it really
accelerates it because this way you know
that, you know, an an agent is truly
being is tied to an authenticated human
and know that, you know, that is
something that Well, well, there are
some cases where you're okay with bots
hanging around, but there are some cases
where you want to know there's a human
in the loop and that a human is
directing the agent to do something. You
can You can do that. Right. And maybe
the last thing to talk about is scale.
So, World is being used by uh or it has
18 million verified humans today. How do
you think of the potential scale this
type of human network can get to and on
what timeline?
Oh, yeah. Well, I mean, there are 8
billion people in the world and, you
know, about 6 billion of them are online
in some form of fashion. You know,
something like 4 billion of them have a
smartphone. And so, the the immediately
addressable TAM is is the 4 billion
people in the world that have access to
a smartphone. Um I think you could see a
world where, you know, today it's it's
around 20 million users, so it's early
days, but we could really scale that
scale to billions of people over time.
And you can see why it'd be valuable for
each person, you know, on the order of
five, 10 bucks a person in value a year
is maybe attached to this ID. This could
become a $50 free cash flow protocol
because of how valuable because of the
revenue that I can generate. And that is
a very, very valuable system. Yeah,
absolutely. We're
going to find out very quickly how the
value of a human is going to accrue. Oh,
I just think we're the time is now.
Like, we are such an inflection point in
the recognition that we need digital
identity and digital solutions. I mean,
you're seeing every AI leader talk about
it. And today on stage, we saw all these
major enterprises come out and announce
partnerships starting with Tinder,
DocuSign, Zoom, Okta, Vercel. All these
companies realize they want to integrate
with World ID. So, we're seeing adoption
come to life now. Cosmo, thank you for
highlighting the investment case for
World. Thanks for having me.