Quick take:
- Phaver is building a Web3 service that provides an onboarding experience similar to web2 social platforms.
- The platform is used by decentralised social protocols that allow users to create, own and monetise their social profiles on Web3.
- Users retain complete control of their own social profiles and data across different social platforms.
Phaver has announced a $7 million seed round backed by Polygon Ventures, Nomad Capital, Symbolic Capital, dao5, Foresight Ventures, Alphanonce, f.actor and Superhero Capital.
According to the announcement, Switzerland-based crypto exchange company SwissBorg also participated in the round, sharing its community members.
The latest fundraising brings the total funding for the Web3 social app to $8.6 million and is valued at about $80 million. Phaver launched in May 2022, with the goal of creating an easier pathway to decentralised social platforms.
The company is building a platform that provides an onboarding experience similar to what users would expect on web2 social platforms. Phaver wants to eliminate the technological challenges of joining communities in Web3.
The company sees a huge potential to disrupt the social media landscape with the help of blockchain technology, but “users will not care about the underlying technology,” Phaver co-founder and CEO Joonatan Lintala told TechCrunch.
Lintala believes that for the mass adoption of users to Web3 social apps, “the user experience needs to feel like it’s a normal social-based app, not a high-tech one,” he said.
His company’s main target is decentralised social protocols that allow people to create, own and monetise their social media profiles on Web3. Users also have complete control of how their social media data is shared and can use their profiles across different social platforms.
Phaver has already tapped some of the leading decentralised social protocols, including the decentralised social networking ecosystem Lens Protocol, which in February 2023 hit a milestone of 100k social profile owners.
It also raised $15 million in a round backed by IDEO CoLab Ventures, Variant, Blockchain Capital and General Catalyst in June.
Phaver has also integrated with Cyberconnect, a Web3 social network that recently teamed up with Animoca Brands to enable socialised experiences on Mocaverse, the Hong Kong-based Web3 investment company’s NFT project.
Phaver plans to use the fresh capital for partnerships, scale its team and ramp up its product pipeline. According to Lintala, Phaver has amassed a user base of 250,000 as it continues to experience steady growth amid the crypto winter.
****
Stay up to date:
Subscribe to our newsletter using this link – we won’t spam!
