Decentralized knowledge protocol Golden has closed a $40 million funding round led by Andreessen Horowitz, or a16z, with additional participation from Protocol Labs, OpenSea Ventures, and the founders of Solana, Dropbox, Postmates, and Twitch, among others. others
In addition to leading the Series B funding round, Andreessen Horowitz general partner Ali Yahya will join Golden’s board of directors along with a16z co-founder Marc Andreessen. The funding gives Golden additional resources to continue building its protocol, which is designed to standardize knowledge discovery and verification in the Web3 era.
Specifically, Golden is developing a decentralized interface that incentivizes the collection and verification of canonical data. The company claims that more than 35,000 users participated in the first testnet phases of the protocol.
Related: Microsoft, Avalanche and Polygon join automation startup Web3 in $20M funding
Although venture funding for the crypto industry has slowed recently, record flows for blockchain-focused startups have been recorded in 2022. Hedge fund Pantera Capital recently upped the ante by revealing plans to raise $1.25 billion for its second blockchain fund. Projects specializing in Web3, which refers to some future iteration of the Internet, have aroused an inordinate interest from the venture capital community.
Describing his product, Golden said the incorporation of Web3 technologies is “adequate to solve the core problems” of incentivization. Golden plans to use native tokens to reward “good actors,” but also specified that the final product “isn’t simply ‘Wikipedia Web3.'” The mainnet launch is slated for the second quarter of 2023.
