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57 changes: 57 additions & 0 deletions world-id/yc.mdx
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---
title: "World ID for YC Startups"
description: "Simple ways to build trust into your startup with World ID."
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---

The World stack is a privacy-preserving trust layer for companies that need to know whether a real, unique, present, or eligible person is behind an action.

## Start with the trust question you need to answer

| Question | Use | What it helps you do |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Who can participate? | **World ID** | Prove a user is a real, unique human. |
| Who is present right now? | **Selfie Check** | Confirm that a human is approving an important action. |
| Who meets the requirements? | **Identity Check (Preview)** | Verify supported document-backed attributes—minimum age, nationality, document type, or issuing country—without collecting the underlying document. |
| When can an agent act? | **AgentKit** | Let an AI agent act after the required human trust checks are satisfied. |

## Why startups use World ID

1. **Stop bots and duplicate accounts.** Make rewards, referrals, voting, reviews, promotions, and social participation one-person-one-action.
2. **Protect sensitive moments.** Add human presence when someone approves a payment, recovers an account, deploys software, or authorizes a high-risk transaction.
3. **Check eligibility privately.** Confirm that someone meets a policy without asking your product to store their full identity documents.
4. **Match trust to risk.** Start with a lightweight check, then require stronger proof of humanity, presence, or eligibility where the stakes are higher.
5. **Build safer AI products.** Distinguish people from agents and make human approval an explicit boundary for consequential actions.
6. **Make communities more accountable.** Reduce impersonation, fake accounts, reputation manipulation, and fraudulent content while preserving privacy.

## Where it fits in YC startups

| If you're building... | The simplest place to use World ID |
| --- | --- |
| Proving you're human | Require one human per account to reduce Sybil attacks. |
| An AI consumer product | Protect a free trial, referral, reward, or limited promotion from duplicate claims. |
| Multiplayer AI | Distinguish verified people from AI agents in a shared environment. |
| An operating system for the physical world | Make sure tasks are assigned to real, unique workers. |
| A real-world data product | Limit data contribution and rewards to one unique contributor. |
| AI-native compliance | Add a privacy-preserving proof that a user is a real human before a regulated or high-risk action. |
| Crypto or stablecoins | Run fair allocations, grants, governance, airdrops, or incentives. |
| Cloud tools for small software | Reduce fake workspaces, spam, and abuse before privileged access. |
| Education | Protect scholarships, subsidized access, rewards, and student benefits. |
| Products for the aging population | Reduce impersonation of patients, family members, and caregivers. |
| Self-maintaining APIs | Add human accountability before critical code changes, merges, or deployments. |
| Defense or physical infrastructure | Add a human trust signal to safety-critical operations. |

## Keep the first use case simple

Choose the one action where abuse would most change the outcome—such as creating an account, claiming a reward, receiving a referral benefit, voting, or accessing a scarce resource. Start there, then add stronger trust signals only when the risk calls for them.

<Note>
World ID helps you know that a unique human can participate. Use Selfie Check when you need a signal that someone is present now, Identity Check (Preview) when you need to know whether they meet a supported requirement, and AgentKit when an agent needs to act on their behalf.
</Note>

## Ready to build?

[Start integrating World ID](/world-id/idkit/integrate) to bring the right trust signal into your product.

Not sure how to use World ID in your project? Email [mateo.sauton@toolsforhumanity.com](mailto:mateo.sauton@toolsforhumanity.com) and we'll help you build it.
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