Web3 crypto startup Golden has raised $40 million in a Series B funding round led by VC firm Andreessen Horowitz (a16z). The web3 crypto firm disclosed the financing in a blog post published on 3rd October. According to Golden, the funding round led by a16z garnered a total of $60 million. The company said it plans to use the funds to build a decentralized and incentivized data protocol. Golden will integrate mechanics from web3 into the system to get data into a new protocol.
Other participants in the project include crypto luminaries, operators, founders and long-term supporters: Protocol Labs, Raj Gokal (Founder of Solana), Dan Romero, OpenSea Ventures, Juan Benet (Founder of Protocol Labs), Arash Ferdowsi (cofounder and ex-CTO of Dropbox), Dylan Field (CEO of Figma), Bastian Lehmann (founder of Postmates and new crypto company), Maryanna Saenko (of Future Ventures), Michael Seibel (ex CEO of Y Combinator and co-founder of Twitch), Avlok Kohli (CEO of AngelList), a16z Cultural Leadership Fund, Harpoon Ventures, Amir Moazami, DCVC, Matt Bellamy (Lead singer of Muse and partner of Helium-3 Ventures), Sridhar Ramaswamy (CEO of the new search engine Neeva), MVP Ventures, Khaled Naim (CEO of Onfleet), HNVR, Vela Partners, Socii Capital, George Lambeth, FalconX, Stefano Bernardi, Wei Guo, Xoogler, TRAC, Scale Asia Ventures, Chaac Ventures, Neal Dempsey and others.
“Knowledge is fragmented; to find reliable information, one needs to search across centralized repositories, personal webpages, news sites, blogs, and private databases. The world lacks a standardized interface for discovering, contributing and verifying knowledge. Creating this interface in a scalable way requires not just data; it requires the development of incentives for data entry, verification, and governance. Web3 technologies and mechanics are well suited to solve the core problems of incentivizing efficient task execution and organizing resources for protocol operations”
Furthermore, the CEO revealed that the Golden protocol is now in the testnet phase. He added that 35,000 individuals are currently submitting facts and validating information through its live decentralized app (the dApp) Discord community. These individuals are also participating in the company’s API and early governance in action toward building and improving the protocol.
Knowledge is for all, and the protocol to capture it should be developed by a wide community.
Golden Rewards Protocol Participants
Participants in the Golden protocol will receive financial rewards for their contributions. The web3 startup has designed the protocol to offer incentives for agents to converge on the truth. While participants who submit correct data get rewards, people who submit incorrect data are penalized.
“Organizations using and paying for the data provide a direct feedback loop for converging on correctness as well as dynamic market pricing. We use the blockchain to construct a ledger of the transactions and eventually the data itself. Tokenization allows for incentives to be awarded to good actors adding correct data into the system and to validators verifying the data accuracy.”
Also, Golden said it uses a mechanism of slashing to “provide downside” for wrong data submission and validation.