Tools for Humanity, the company behind Worldcoin, has acquired Ottr Wallet, a digital wallet specialist and contributor to Worldcoin’s biometric digital identity project.
Founded only a year-and-a-half ago, Ottr Wallet has already achieved the milestone of 25,000 active users, the company says. The company offers a Solana-based self-custody crypto app designed to make holding and using cryptocurrency as simple and secure as possible. It is meant to streamline the process of sending USDC instantly and without fees, avoiding the complicated setup typically associated with self-custody wallets and the storage of seed phrases.
Solana is a high-performance blockchain platform designed to support decentralized applications (dApps) and cryptocurrencies, notable for its speed and efficiency. It employs a unique consensus mechanism called Proof of History (PoH) alongside Proof of Stake (PoS), which helps to optimize the network’s timekeeping and transaction throughput, enabling it to process around 50,000 transactions per second.
The Ottr and Tools for Humanity teams met last year, and quickly recognized an opportunity for collaboration. Tools for Humanity invited Ottr to lead the development of Worldcoin’s consumer app and mobile wallet, the World App, which the companies say is now serving more than three million users monthly.
Worldcoin’s aim is to create a global digital currency that uses iris biometric technology for secure and unique individual identification. The initiative is designed to support a more equitable global economy by making it easier for people to access and use digital currency, irrespective of their location or socio-economic status. The World App is the platform’s application that facilitates user interaction with Worldcoin, enabling individuals to have their iris scanned by a device known as “the Orb.” This process is intended to create a World ID, which serves as a secure and unique identifier on the blockchain, preventing fraud and ensuring that the benefits of the digital economy are accessible to everyone.
With the new acquisition, the Ottr Wallet team will be tasked with focusing exclusively on the refinement of the World App. As a result, the Ottr Wallet itself will be sunsetted. The company says its backend service will continue to operate for three months in order to give users plenty of runway to transition to other Solana-compatible crypto wallets.
Financial terms of the acquisition have not been disclosed.
Source: Newsfile Corp.
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March 1, 2024 – by Alex Perala