Reddit co-founder Ohanian and Polygon launch $200M funding for web 3.0 social media project
On December 17, Polygon and Seven Seven Six have announced a $200 million initiative to back projects working at the intersection of social media and Web 3.0.
Seven Seven Six is a venture capital firm owned by Alexis Ohanian.
The initiative would be focused on gaming applications and social media platforms that will be built on Polygon’s infrastructure.
Ohanian had co-founded Reddit in 2005, and left in 2010, returning as executive chairman in 2014 for leading a turnaround before eventually resigning in 2020. He has been a seed investor in many prominent tech and blockchain firms, including Sky Mavis (the developer of Axie Infinity and Patreon), Instacart and Coinbase.
As an Ethereum scaling solution, the exosystem of Polygon has expanded rapidly in 2021, with over 3000 decentralized applications that are built on its network. Earlier this month, Polygon had announced it is dedicating up to 250 million MATIC tokens that are valued at $627.5 million at the time, for developing zero-knowledge technologies.
The zero-knowledge technologies are intended for complex decentralized finance applications. Protocol launches and cross-chain migrations have been among the biggest drivers of its token price growth for 2021.
Polygon’s co-founder Sandeep Nailwal has described social media business models as having a “profound impact” on the world, especially where Web 3.0 is concerned.
Web 3.0 is a broad concept referring to the next generation of the internet. Through Web 3.0, users can create “the value, control the network and reap the rewards,” Nailwal said.
The Polygon partnership is not Ohanian’s first march into Web 3.0 development. He had previously teamed up with Solana Ventures in November 2021 in order to raise $100 million for various other Web 3.0 initiatives.
