World Chain is a blockchain rooted in proof of human, where priority goes to humans over bots.

One major vertical where priority for humans is most impactful is DeFi, where humans have always been at a disadvantage; competing against bots and sybil farms.

World ID solves this and makes DeFi for Humans a reality where only verified human users can receive additional priority rewards when depositing into DeFi protocols like Morpho, something only possible on World.

To achieve this, protocols need a partner capable of running reward programs across their projects, with highly customized mechanics, and at scale.

That’s where Merkl comes in!

Merkl enabled the first onchain rewards logic for humans verified with World ID. This solution has proven composable across multiple onchain use cases, such as liquidity provisioning on Uniswap or lending & borrowing on Morpho.

Merkl with World ID enabled reward campaigns on Morpho that:

• Go to only verified humans: rewards are distributed exclusively to users with an Orb-verified World ID, filtering out bots.
  
• Ensure fairness: rewards are currently capped at deposits worth of 1,000 WLD and 1,000 USDC, respectively, per user. Whether someone deposits 1,000 or 30,000 WLD or USDC, they only earn rewards on the first 1,000, ensuring broader access to rewards.
  
• Operate at scale: the Merkl engine can scan the wallets of tens of thousands of participants simultaneously and distribute rewards that can be claimed every 5 hours by all of them at the same time.
  

This mix of standard and custom campaigns showcases what makes World ID and World Chain unique, while still attracting liquidity through widely adopted protocols.

Since April 2025 (as of the time of writing), more than 28 reward campaigns have been launched on World Chain via Merkl.

The results of these campaigns are clear: in just a few months, total value locked (TVL) in DeFi on World Chain jumped from $3M in May to $99M in October 2025 (as of the time of writing).

During this period, ~$5M in rewards were distributed, engaging more than one million participants across various campaigns.

The custom human-only campaigns proved especially powerful. By requiring a verified World ID, more than 100,000 verified human users deposited $22.5M in the Morpho Mini App, which distributed $875K in rewards, so far!