Hong Kong, Hong Kong, July 25, 2024, Chainwire
‘Web3 Shopify (NYSE:) Social’ Hits 30K Onchain Users in 2 Weeks as First App Launches
OpenSocial Protocol, a foldable infrastructure layer for building social apps, today announced a $6 million strategic funding round from Framework Ventures and North Island Ventures, with participation from other investors including Hivemind Capital Partners, Stratos, Moonrock Capital, Chorus One, HV Capital, X Ventures, Gate Labs, Panga Capital, Aspen Digital, and angels like Jordi Alexander (Selini Capital), Sreeram Kannan (EigenLayer), Luca Netz (Pudgy Penguins), Sandeep Nailwal (Polygon Labs), Yaoqi (Altlayer), Robinson Burkey (Wormhole Foundation), Gabby Dizon (YGG), Mik Naayem (Dapper Labs), Cygaar (Abstract), Regan Bozman (Lattice (OTC:) Capital), Muddy Water, and more.
Built by Everest Ventures Group, a leading Web3 operations group in Asia focused on consumer applications, OpenSocial Protocol provides open-source, multichain social app infrastructure tools that enable users and communities to build decentralized social apps (dApps) without coding experience. It’s a vision that OpenSocial supports because it helps lower the barriers to entry for users who want to build their own social app.
In addition to the $5 million seed funding round and $15 million in OpenSocial Protocol ecosystem funding raised earlier, OpenSocial Protocol now has $26 million in funding to support the development of the protocol. Previous investors include Portal Ventures, Animoca Brands, OKX Ventures, and notable Web3 entrepreneurs include Smokey the Bera (Berachain), Jason Yano (Blockworks), Roham Gharegozlou (Dapper Labs), Brian Fabian Crain (Chorus One), Mike Dudas (6th Man Ventures), and others.
“We believe the OpenSocial team is well-positioned to become a major player in the growing SocialFi movement across Asia,” he said. Framework Ventures Co-Founder Vance Spencer. “Their team is incredibly talented and has prior experience scaling applications and deploying to millions of users. We look forward to working with the team as it grows to support several promising new applications.”
“We believe OpenSocial is building a sustainable social platform that can attract millions of new users to cryptocurrency, and we are thrilled to support Allen and his incredibly capable team in this endeavor,” he said. Travis Scher, Co-Founder and Managing Director, North Island Ventures.
“Strategic support accelerates OpenSocial’s ability to deploy infrastructure across all major chains and ecosystems, launch a user-friendly platform where creators, moderators, and users can easily build communities and develop new decentralized applications aligned with existing Web3 culture and communities. Our goal is to help 1,000 social applications become independent and launch by 2025,” he said. Allen Ng, Co-Founder of OpenSocial Protocol.
OpenSocial Protocol Hits 30,000 On-Chain Users in 2 Weeks of First App Launch
OpenSocial Protocol aims to enable thousands of applications by providing infrastructure and a customizable user interface layer, providing true ownership of intellectual property and social relationships, and offering more tailored monetization and financial incentives for communities and users. It builds the necessary open-source infrastructure to enable the largest multi-channel social economy by solving three key challenges: user retention, spam prevention, and user growth beyond a crypto-centric audience.
SoMon (low for Social Monster), a Reddit-like forum created to allow communities to feel a sense of true ownership, became the first app to launch on the OpenSocial protocol on June 19, having over 30,000 energetic onchain users, an average engagement time close to 20 minutes, and over 300,000 onchain transactions, excluding spam bots, in just two weeks, solving one of the major challenges on every social media platform.
Another app that runs on OpenSocial is Zeek, a social collaboration network that lets users leverage the value of their community-building networks through on-chain social rewards and reputation-building mechanisms. In June, Zeek closed its own $3 million fundraising round.
OpenSocial: Enabling scalable, multi-channel social apps without coding experience
The OpenSocial protocol’s modular design with easy-to-implement social tools in a multichain approach enables creators and communities to build applications quickly and cost-effectively. Features are either on-chain or off-chain and include feed, chat, text/video/audio/posts, comments, reactions, voting, sharing, on-chain social graphs (social data and structure), tribes (user and topic-based communities), megaphones (advertising engine), and plugins (token issuance, DAO tools, betting, voting, rewards, matching, mini-games).
By embedding social into the core experience across verticals, onchain social helps break down silos and enables greater connectivity and engagement across the ecosystem. “We believe social has the potential to be a major catalyst for mainstream consumer adoption. Every community builder and creator should be an owner and entrepreneur.” Added.
EVG also hired 80 developers and engineers to build the infrastructure to deploy thousands of social apps with just a few clicks.
By actively collaborating with pioneers to integrate growing communities, redefining data sovereignty, and implementing sustainable economic incentives, OpenSocial is paving the way for a future where everyone can develop meaningful yet lasting social connections and truly own their social data.
About the OpenSocial protocol
OpenSocial Protocol (OpenSocial) is a multi-channel social infrastructure that enables creators to seamlessly build social applications. Using a stalwart social graph and modular design, OpenSocial enables clear promotion of content to specific user groups, ensuring fair distribution of value across all stakeholders. OpenSocial offers one of the best data, tools, and finance layers, with the vision of enabling the largest multi-channel social economy.
The founder of the OpenSocial protocol is Everest Ventures Group.
Website: www.opensocial.co
Twitter: https://twitter.com/OpenSocialLabs
Media contact: Gemma Lo / gemma@opensocial.co
About Everest Ventures Group
Founded in 2018, Everest Ventures Group (EVG) is a Web3 operating group that drives mass adoption of Web3 by building products with real-world apply cases to reach the next million users.
Headquartered in Hong Kong with a global team of over 300, EVG has developed and launched over 15 products across social media (OpenSocial Protocol, SoMon, Zeek), gaming and culture (Mugen Interactive, Legend of Arcadia, Last Odyssey, LiveArt), and financial technology (Aspen Digital).
As an early investor and lead advisor, EVG has helped found over 10 unicorns and 150+ defining projects, including Celestia, Berachain, Wormhole, Dapper Labs (Flow), Animoca Brands, Immutable, The Sandbox, Yuga Labs, Kraken, Lukka, Dunamu, and Blocklords.
Website: https://www.evg.co/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/EVGHQ/
Disclosures: The information contained herein is precise as of the date of publication and is subject to change. This is not investment advice, and readers should not interpret the discussion of any specific organization as a recommendation to buy or sell, or a solicitation of an offer to buy or sell, any securities or digital assets related to such organization.
contactPR ManagerKelvin YeoEverest Ventures Groupkelvin.yeo@evg.co
