Users sign up for World ID by visiting a Worldcoin Operator and verifying their unique personhood at an Orb. The Orb uses iris biometrics to establish an individual’s unique personhood and then creates a digital World ID, which is stored on the users device using a compatible identity wallet. World App is built on top of Safe's smart contract accounts and also serves as an identity wallet.

Worldcoin is an open source protocol primarily consisting of World ID - a privacy-preserving digital identity and World App - a fully self custodial wallet. Worldcoin was founded by Sam Altman, Alex Blania and Max Novendstern and publicly launched in July 2023.

Worldcoin is currently governed by the Worldcoin Foundation, but intends to decentralize governance over time. Worldcoin's investors include a16z, Multicoin Capital, 1confirmation, CoinFund etc.

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Infrastructure

Worldcoin

# Worldcoin Expenses Methodology

## 1. Overview

The Worldcoin expenses metric measures the total daily value of WLD token incentives distributed by the Worldcoin protocol. This includes both user rewards (tokens granted to verified users) and operator rewards (tokens distributed to World ID orb operators). The metric captures the protocol's token-based expenses by tracking outflows from designated Worldcoin treasury and reward wallets on the Optimism blockchain.

## 2. Data sources

- **Blockchain events**: Parsed `Transfer` events from Optimism for the WLD token contract
- **Transaction data**: Optimism token transfer records containing sender, receiver, amount, and timestamp information
- **External data**: End-of-day price feeds for USD conversion of WLD token amounts
- **Token metadata**: WLD token contract address and decimal configuration
- **Wallet configurations**: Hardcoded list of Worldcoin Foundation and World Assets Ltd. wallet addresses used for different reward distribution purposes

## 3. Step-by-step calculation

### Component A: Worldcoin reward wallet identification
- **Purpose**: Identify official Worldcoin wallets used for token distribution and categorize their usage
- **Logic**: A predefined configuration maps specific wallet addresses to their purposes, including user reward distribution wallets, operator withdrawal wallets, cold storage wallets, and temporary holding wallets. Each wallet is flagged to indicate whether it's used for user WLD rewards distribution.
- **Key fields**: `account_address` for wallet identification, `account_name` for descriptive labeling, and `used_in_user_wld_rewards` flag to distinguish user reward wallets

### Component B: User rewards calculation  
- **Purpose**: Capture WLD tokens distributed directly to end users as rewards
- **Logic**: Extract all WLD token transfers originating from wallets flagged as user reward distributors. Filter out internal transfers between Worldcoin wallets by excluding transfers where the recipient address is also a known Worldcoin wallet. This ensures only external user rewards are counted.
- **Key fields**: `block_timestamp` for timing, `transaction_hash` and `log_index` for unique identification, `from_address` for the distributing wallet, `amount` for token quantity

### Component C: Operator rewards calculation
- **Purpose**: Capture WLD tokens distributed to World ID orb operators
- **Logic**: Extract WLD token transfers from the designated operator withdrawal wallet to external addresses. Exclude transfers to other known Worldcoin wallets to avoid counting internal movements. The operator withdrawal wallet is specifically identified as address `0x799a7384a9b0b3336cc5f7c15071d3738acd2033`.
- **Key fields**: `block_timestamp` for timing, `transaction_hash` and `log_index` for unique identification, `amount` for token quantity, `distributor_wallet` labeled as "Operator Rewards Withdrawals Wallet"

### Component D: Token incentives aggregation
- **Purpose**: Combine user and operator rewards into a unified token incentives metric
- **Logic**: Union the user rewards and operator rewards datasets, adding categorical labels to distinguish expense types. Aggregate transfers by day using timestamp truncation. Add business classification metadata including business line as "infrastructure", market sector as "infrastructure", business segment as "other", and product as "worldid".
- **Key fields**: `timestamp` truncated to daily boundaries, `chain_id` set to the blockchain name, `expense_type` categorizing as either "User rewards" or "Operator rewards", `token_incentives` containing the raw token amounts

### Final aggregation
- **Combining components**: User and operator reward transfers are combined through a union operation, maintaining separate expense type categorization
- **Currency conversion**: Token amounts are converted to USD using end-of-day price feeds and corrected for WLD token decimals to convert from raw blockchain units to human-readable token quantities
- **Time aggregation**: All transfers are aggregated to daily boundaries using timestamp truncation to the day level
- **Final calculation**: The expenses metric is the sum of all USD-converted WLD token distributions (both user and operator rewards) on each day, representing the protocol's total token-based expenses

*This methodology was automatically generated by Token Terminal's methodology analyzer.*

Total project operating and incentive expenses.

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Expenses

Expenses

Competitive landscape

Chain breakdown