Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian’s venture firm has teamed up with the Solana blockchain’s venture arm for a $100 million (£74m) investment initiative into decentralised social projects.
Seven Seven Six, Ohanian’s firm, will pay for half of the initiative with Solana coughing up the remaining $50 million.
Ohanian gave his thoughts on Solana at a conference in Lisbon on November 9: “With a high-performance blockchain like Solana, there is an unprecedented opportunity to fuse social and crypto in a way that feels like a Web2 social product but with the added incentive of empowering users with real ownership.
“We are at a pivotal inflection point in these early days of Web3.”
The idea of a Web3-powered social network remains almost entirely unexplored and could be the next major growth vector in the blockchain industry.
Raj Gokal, the chief operating officer of Solana Labs, said: “Web3 turns users and creators into owners and stakeholders, a change that can’t come soon enough to social media.”
Solana also recently announced the launch of another $100 million fund, this time for a joint Web3 gaming initiative with venture capital firm Lightspeed.
Amy Wu, a Lightspeed partner, explained the goals of the initiative: “We are looking to back great teams, both crypto-native, and gaming-native. We believe gaming is one of the best opportunities to onboard the next billion users onto Web3, and one of the best use cases for NFTs.”
The gaming initiative has got straight into handing out funding. Faraway, a Solana-based gaming company which received $9 million from Lightspeed earlier this year, has raised an additional $21 million in its latest round that was led by the new fund.
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