A World of Human Possibilities I Mateo Sauton
Sun, Aug 2, 2026, 12:00 AM
In this workshop at ETHGlobal New York 2026, Mateo Sauton from Tools for Humanity, the company building tools for World, presents a world of human possibilities, walking through several products for hackers to build on plus the hackathon tracks. He frames the core insight: the goal was never just to prove someone is a human on the internet but to know there is a human behind an internet interaction, which matters now that roughly 45 to 50% of internet traffic is bots. He describes World entering phase three of its plan, where World ID is reliable enough that enterprises like Tinder, DocuSign, Zoom, Okta, and Vercel are adopting it, and where World App has 38 million total users, 18 million verified humans, and around 7.5 million active users. He notes the Mini Kit SDK for building mini apps (third-party sites inside World App that leverage its distribution) but focuses on other SDKs. Mateo details the star product, World ID, used via the ID Kit SDK, which proves you are a unique human without revealing any information using zero knowledge technology, with three credential tiers (the Orb iris scan being most reliable, then passport, then face) verifiable on-chain or in cloud across many languages. He then introduces Agent Kit, which adds a World ID to an agent's wallet and registers it in an agent book mapping humans to agents, so a human can back multiple agents. Its three capabilities are acting for a human with a human in the loop (for example, requiring approval before an agent trades over $1,000), agentic commerce via a Shopify integration, and an x402 challenge flow where a server verifies an agent's signature against the agent book. Because the unit of trust is the human, not the wallet, spinning up more agents gives no advantage since rate limits and free trials tie back to one person. He previews Proof Kit, a new open source Rust-like DSL for writing zero knowledge circuits with Noir, proven client-side and post-quantum secure. He shares case studies (the Shopify unique-human hat, credit.cash offering undercollateralized anonymous credit to verified humans, Morpho giving unique humans increased yield, and Tinder giving verified humans boosts), lays out four tracks (Agent Kit, World ID use cases, continuity, and Proof Kit), and closes with an extended Q&A on privacy, per-website isolation, and how the iris hash prevents duplicate verification. 00:00 Introduction 00:11 Meet Mateo and Tools for Humanity 00:55 Proving a Human Is Behind the Interaction 01:17 Why Bots Are Half of Internet Traffic 02:13 Entering Phase Three of the Project 02:53 Becoming the Biggest Human Financial Network 03:19 World App by the Numbers 03:45 The Mini Kit SDK and Mini Apps 04:08 Enterprises Building on World 04:54 The Star Product: World ID 05:23 Proving You Are a Unique Human 06:01 The Three Credential Tiers 06:33 Why the Orb Is the Most Reliable 07:15 Integrating ID Kit 07:55 Introducing Agent Kit 08:19 Why a Wallet Cannot Tell If a Human Is Behind It 08:49 Mapping Humans to Agents in the Agent Book 09:17 Capability One: Acting for a Human 09:42 Agentic Commerce With Shopify 10:22 The x402 Challenge Flow 11:29 Why Every Agent Ties Back to One Human 11:51 The Three Access Modes 12:36 The Tool Router Integrations 13:20 Introducing Proof Kit and Noir 13:46 Client-Side, Post-Quantum ZK Proving 14:48 Why This May Power World ID's Future 15:15 Case Study: The Shopify Hat 16:12 Case Study: credit.cash 17:43 Case Study: Morpho and Increased Yield 18:22 Case Study: Tinder Boosts 19:08 Go and Build: The Four Tracks 20:12 Why Projects Should Outlast the Weekend 20:30 Resources and QR Code 20:50 Q&A: Cross-Referencing and Privacy 22:18 Why Each Website Is Isolated 23:05 Q&A: Can You Verify Who Someone Is 23:46 Q&A: Preventing Duplicate Verification 24:46 Q&A: Post-Quantum in Noir Circuits 25:11 Closing _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ *ETHGlobal New York 2026* This workshop is specifically for ETHGlobal New York 2026, a 3-day hackathon held June 12-14 at the Metropolitan Pavilion, bringing together the most skilled web3 developers, designers and product builders from all around the globe for a weekend-long adventure to advance the Ethereum ecosystem! Watch the full ETHGlobal New York 2026 playlist here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLXzKMXK2aHh7MZ8T-ict6YshkFDw9WJCu _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ ✅ *Follow ETHGlobal* X: https://x.com/ETHGlobal Website: https://ethglobal.com YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/ETHGlobal _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _Are you interested in Ethereum development and entrepreneurship?_ 👉 Sign up for the next ETHGlobal event: https://ethglobal.com/events 🎁 Get exclusive access and perks with ETHGlobal Plus! https://ethglobal.com/plus 📣 Want us to throw an event in your city? Tell us where! https://ethglobal.com/city _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _