Sam Altman's other startup is building an app to compete with Elon Musk's X

magine a world full of basketball-sized "Orbs" that stare deep into our eyes, capturing the unique pattern of our irises. These ubiquitous Orbs would allow us to do anything requiring identification, online or in real life, from buying bread to paying taxes.

- Christopher Mims

Imagine a world full of basketball-sized "Orbs" that stare deep into our eyes, capturing the unique pattern of our irises.

These ubiquitous Orbs would allow us to do anything requiring identification, online or in real life, from buying bread to paying taxes. It's a vision reminiscent of other recent efforts—including Amazon's attempt to replace credit cards with our palms, and Ant Group's efforts in China to make it possible to pay with your face.

The big difference? The builders of an app called World-including Chief Executive Alex Blania and his co-founder Sam Altman of OpenAI fame-envision a time in the not-too-distant future when you can't do much without an ocular check-in. AI agents will be so prevalent, and so humanlike, that we'll need to repeatedly prove we're real to prevent those Als from masquerading as humans on everything from payment platforms to social networks.

To accelerate adoption of what World calls its "anonymous proof-of-human" system, the company recently launched a mini app store inside its app, which is available for iPhones and Android devices.

World's mini app store is part of a broader strategy to create an "everything app." These apps—also called "super apps"—are common throughout Asia, where WeChat, Grab, Alipay and KakaoTalk allow users to do everything from shopping and chatting to ordering a meal or a ride.

World's mini app store, which currently includes services to send and receive cryptocurrency, chat with verified humans and access micro-loans, is a first step toward creating what Altman, Blania and their team hope will be a vast ecosystem reaching more than a billion people. And as the company's identification system expands, they anticipate their main competitor will be Elon Musk's own attempt at an everything app: X.