Written by: Christian Catalini, a16z
Translated by: Portal Labs
Just a few weeks ago, World company founder Alex Blania revealed his latest strategic card in front of a hall full of crypto bigwigs. While catching the policy tailwind to seize the US market was eye-catching, the real masterstroke was their lightning breakthrough into mainstream consumer scenarios. This marks the moment crypto is tearing off the "geek club" label and truly charging into the brutal arena of daily commerce.
World's move was bold: convincing Americans to swap an iris scan for a "real person verification badge" is not easy, and even promising privacy protection is challenging (and the timing might be too early). But they had already silently done something big, paving the way with three insurance measures over the past three years.
First Create Real Product Value, Then Add Some Token Sweetener
World initially followed an old path: attracting new users through Token incentives. But this approach, praised as the "Bitcoin success paradigm" and later copied by countless projects, actually reversed cause and effect. World encountered pitfalls in early testing - aggressive incentives brought users, but privacy circles and some developers began to criticize: "This isn't growth, this is just hiding behind revenue."
But remember, Bitcoin's success came from providing an unprecedented asset logic from the start: decentralized, fixed total supply, not controlled by central banks. True, miner rewards and wealth explosion myths attracted early speculators and later institutions and nations. But the builders who truly stayed were not focused on "wealth expectations" but on its radical possibilities as a new asset and payment system.
Most projects that blindly copied this approach are now queuing in the crypto world's "graveyard".
The crypto world can't escape basic economic laws. Like any startup, first create a real, usable product, then use Token to solve cold start or ecosystem incentive problems. Otherwise, no matter how sophisticated the economic model, it's just empty talk.
Blania presented three real pain points: social networking, gaming, and credit domains, where bots now run rampant and human-machine distinction is difficult. He put World's "human verification" system on the table, explaining why it's worth getting an iris scan to get an "I am human" ticket.
In an era of AI rapidly invading everything, we will eventually face authentication needs of "are you human", and World is just getting ahead of the curve.
Learning to Handle "Infrastructure Inversion"
In the early crypto boom, we all rushed in. When designing Bitcoin experiments at MIT, I truly believed we could completely disrupt payment and financial systems within two or three years. Ten years later, we've barely begun.
To truly push crypto products outside the circle, we must align with the experience traditional users and merchants are already accustomed to. This means building a bridge between old systems and new technologies. And this bridge often requires compromises that would seem heretical to "crypto fundamentalists".
But this stage is unavoidable. You must traverse that awkward period of "old and new coexistence" - which Andreas Antonopoulos calls infrastructure inversion. Imagine dial-up internet occupying phone lines, or the first car bumping along a gravel road - it sounds uncomfortable.
This "technological fence-sitting" makes new systems initially difficult to widely deploy, only able to patch certain vertical scenarios, far from disrupting the entire system. AI faces similar challenges.
World initially tried to skip this stage, pushing tokens as the protagonist. But the new version has completely turned around: embracing "infrastructure inversion", returning to product utility, moving more steadily and deeply.
Don't fantasize about creating a globally universal wallet that doesn't connect to old systems. Deposits and withdrawals must be as smooth as PayPal's online payment was, otherwise how can it become mainstream?
This is why the new World App immediately connected with Stripe and Visa cards. Trust, familiarity, and utility, all in place at once. By being "backward compatible", it gives traditional finance a chance to observe and test, rather than being directly eliminated.
This logic is quietly pushing crypto towards cross-border payments. In the future, technology might enter the mainstream, but before that, it must "borrow the old track", streamline processes, and minimize friction.
Remember, many crypto mechanisms (including economic models) only have magic at scale. But to achieve scale, people must first get on board. Without even a boarding ramp, the most perfect model is just spinning in place.
Whether Crypto Succeeds Depends Critically on Implementation
Like all new technologies, crypto is not destined to win. Don't believe the self-congratulatory myths. More specifically, "decentralization" - crypto's soul and its most critical market disruption contribution - was never a sure thing.
Stablecoins are a good example.
To integrate with traditional financial systems, the crypto world created this tool, which is indeed useful. But problems followed: the ghosts of centralized management and closed networks were invited back.
I tend to believe open architectures will ultimately prevail, but don't forget, those "vested interests" have no reason to let you pass easily.
Blania and his team have made a big bet: betting users will care about decentralized data control rights, and that enterprises will build better user experiences on this system. How difficult would decentralized identity be in challenging the existing landscape - centralized players start with natural UX and functional advantages.
So if World wants to overtake on a curved track, the first step is to convince users to hand over their biometric data. The US market is already running, and we'll soon see if they can find a balance between "privacy vs convenience".
Of course, a gentler "onboarding method" might be smarter: like first releasing a familiar "verification badge" that can unlock additional functions in apps people already use. Don't rush to make people stare at an iris-scanning sphere. The problem is, this makes identity verification less reliable, easy to game, circumvent, or exploit.
Blania's judgment might not be wrong. In this endless cat-and-mouse game with AI, only military-grade biometric verification is truly "unbreakable" human proof. But this doesn't mean he can't be gentler, not pushing users directly to the sphere on day one.
Airdrop hunters will naturally queue up, but this sweet excitement will last at most a few days, and once subsidies stop, the heat dissipates. Truly sustainable growth only exists in daily value realization, and this is their real opportunity.
If the World App can break through with payment experience, plus globally smooth deposit and withdrawal channels, it might truly create a breakthrough.
Conclusion
Now, they've bet on the entire rhythm. What we'll watch is just one thing:
Can the crypto world really break into the mainstream market?
No matter whether World's experiment ultimately succeeds, I hope to see more crypto projects willing to move the spotlight from "token economics" and "price fluctuations" to actually creating daily usable products.
Because this shift, while not sexy or exciting, is the bridge the entire industry must cross to enter the mainstream market.
