Farcaster, the decentralized social media protocol, introduced a $150 million Collection A funding spherical on Tuesday, offering a significant enhance to the fast-growing community’s growth plans.
The funding spherical was led by Paradigm, with participation from funding corporations together with Andreessen Horowitz’s a16z crypto fund, Haun Ventures, Union Sq. Ventures, Variant, and Normal Crypto, amongst others. Farcaster advised Unchained Crypto that the elevate values the startup at $1 billion, making it the newest crypto unicorn.
In a post Tuesday, Farcaster co-founder Dan Romero outlined the agency’s priorities for the newly raised capital: “We’re targeted on two issues for the remainder of the yr: Rising each day lively customers [and] including developer primitives to the protocol like channels and direct messaging.”
The announcement comes on the heels of Farcaster’s permissionless launch in October 2023, which opened the protocol to all builders and customers. Since then, Farcaster has seen sizable development, claiming 350,000 paid sign-ups and a 50-fold improve in community exercise. The community is constructed on Optimism, an Ethereum layer-2 scaling community.
Farcaster was based in 2020 by a pair of Coinbase alums, Romero and Varun Srinivasan. It gained important traction initially of 2024 with the launch of Frames, a characteristic that pulls in performance—like minting NFTs or taking part in video games—from exterior apps with out making the person depart the social feed.
Editor’s word: This text was written with the help of AI. Edited and fact-checked by Andrew Hayward.