WorldCircle

WorldCircle is a mini app we built on the World ecosystem to make networking at events way easier and more meaningful. You know how you meet people at conferences or hackathons, exchange info, and then completely forget them a few days later? That’s exactly the problem we wanted to solve. With WorldCircle, you can meet people, verify who they are, remember them, and explore events, all in one place.

The app runs as a World Mini App, which means it’s lightweight and works inside the World App without needing a separate download. Mini apps are great because they’re fast, context-aware, and built for specific experiences. At an event, you can see who’s around, connect with people instantly via QR codes, and save every person you meet into your personal circle. You can even add notes or tags about your conversations, so you don’t have to rely on memory or business cards.

The second key piece is the Self Protocol, which makes sure everyone you meet is a real person. Fake profiles and spam are a huge pain at events, and the Self Protocol solves that by letting people verify their identity in a privacy-safe way. When someone joins the app, their identity gets verified, and you can trust that every connection you make is authentic. You can also share claims like “attended this event” or “works in this role” without revealing unnecessary personal info.

Finally, there’s The Graph, which helps organize and explore all your connections. Every verified connection, note, and interaction is stored in a subgraph, so you can see mutual contacts, shared interests, or even discover people you haven’t met yet but are connected through others. Over time, your social graph grows across events, helping you build a meaningful, persistent network instead of random, forgettable interactions.

So basically, the app works like this: you join an event → verify your identity → connect with people → save them in your circle with notes → expand your social graph. After the event, you still have all your contacts organized and accessible, so you can follow up, collaborate, or just remember who you met.

What makes WorldCircle really useful is that it turns networking from a stressful, forgettable activity into something simple, reliable, and insightful. You meet real people, remember them, and discover your network in a way that’s organized, and actually useful.

WorldCircle is built around three core pillars: World Mini Apps, Self Protocol, and The Graph, and each plays a critical role in making the app functional, fast, and reliable.

1. World Mini Apps: The app is built as a mini app inside the World ecosystem, which allows it to run seamlessly without requiring users to install a separate app. We used the mini app framework to create a lightweight, responsive interface for event networking. The frontend is a React-based PWA, optimized for mobile devices, so users can browse attendee lists, scan QR codes, and add people to their circles in real time. To improve performance, we implemented local caching, which ensures that user profiles and notes are immediately accessible, even when the network lags. The mini app framework also made it easy to leverage World’s event context, so the app knows which attendees are nearby and can provide real-time updates.

2. Self Protocol: Identity verification is powered by the Self Protocol, a decentralized framework that confirms users are real humans while preserving privacy. Every time someone joins an event or a connection is requested, the app triggers a Self Protocol verification. To keep the experience seamless, we implemented a background verification queue that batches these checks and updates the UI asynchronously. This ensures users see instant results while all cryptographic proofs are validated behind the scenes. Self Protocol integration removes the need to build a separate authentication system and guarantees that all connections are trustworthy, preventing spam or fake profiles.

3. The Graph: All verified connections, notes, and interactions are indexed through The Graph using custom subgraphs. This allows the app to quickly query the social graph for mutual connections, shared interests, or potential new contacts. We structured the subgraphs to support real-time updates, so whenever a new connection is verified, it immediately appears in the user’s network view. One clever implementation was combining The Graph with serverless functions to asynchronously sync updates from Self Protocol verifications, making the network visualization instant without overloading the client.

By combining these three pillars, WorldCircle became a lightweight but powerful platform for verified, persistent, and discoverable networking. World Mini Apps provide the fast, mobile-first interface; Self Protocol guarantees real human verification; and The Graph organizes all connections into an easily navigable social graph. Together, they allow users to meet, verify, remember, and explore connections at events in real time, while keeping the experience secure, fast, and scalable.