OpenSocial Protocol Raises $6 Million to Build Web3 Social Infrastructure
OpenSocial Protocol, a platform for building social applications on blockchain technology, has secured $6 million in strategic funding. The investment round was led by Framework Ventures and North Island Ventures, with participation from several other venture capital firms and angel investors in the Web3 space. This brings OpenSocial Protocol's total funding to $26 million, including previous seed funding and ecosystem funds.
Developed by Everest Ventures Group, OpenSocial Protocol provides open-source, multichain infrastructure tools that allow users to create decentralized social applications without coding experience. The platform aims to lower entry barriers for building community apps in the Web3 ecosystem. With the new funding, OpenSocial plans to expand its infrastructure across major blockchain networks and launch a user-friendly platform for creators, moderators, and users to easily build communities.
The first application built on OpenSocial Protocol, called SoMon, launched on June 19th. SoMon is described as a Reddit-like forum designed to give communities true ownership of their content and data. Within two weeks of launch, SoMon reportedly attracted over 30,000 on-chain active users, with an average engagement time of nearly 20 minutes and over 300,000 on-chain transactions.
OpenSocial Protocol's modular design includes various social features that can be implemented on-chain or off-chain. These include feeds, chatrooms, multimedia posts, comments, reactions, voting, and social graphs. The platform also offers tools for creating tribes (user and topic-based communities), advertising engines, and plug-ins for additional functionalities like token issuance and DAO tools.
Allen Ng, Co-Founder of OpenSocial Protocol, stated that the company aims to help launch 1,000 community apps by 2025. The protocol is focused on addressing key challenges in social media platforms, including user retention, spam bot prevention, and expanding user growth beyond the crypto-centric audience.
Investors expressed confidence in OpenSocial's potential to become a significant player in the growing SocialFi movement, particularly in Asia. Framework Ventures Co-Founder Vance Spencer highlighted the team's prior experience in scaling apps and onboarding millions of users, while Travis Scher of North Island Ventures emphasized the platform's potential to bring new users into the crypto ecosystem.
