Decentralized Web3 Protocol Golden Raises $40 Million Backed by A16z

Golden, a startup that seeks to build a decentralized data hub, has raised $40 million dollars in a Series B funding round. The round, which was led by a16z crypto, will allow the company to keep building its concept, which revolves around combining data submission and validation with Web3-based token incentives.

Golden Raises $40 Million to Build Decentralized Encyclopedia

Golden, a decentralized data hub company, has announced it has raised $40 million in its latest Series B funding round. The round, which was led by a16z crypto, had the participation of many big names in the VC industry including Opensea Ventures and leaders associated with Solana, Protocol Labs, Figma, and others.

The company, which seeks to pair Web3 with the construction of a solid and verifiable information hub, will use the funds to keep building on its business model, which revolves around providing reliable data to customers. This is because current data mining models have proven to be unreliable, according to Jude Gomila, CEO and founder of Golden.

Gomila believes the only way of constructing this global data repository is by creating incentives for users to contribute to the initiative. Golden provides a protocol that rewards users for the verification and submission of data and ostensibly has ways of punishing the introduction of fake data to the system. The protocol also has a means of giving increased rewards to users that submit the most used and requested data. In this way, the introduction of useful data is incentivized.

Business Model

The operation of the protocol includes public NFTs (non-fungible tokens) that have information about any concept included in the network (for example, Coinbase, Open Source Software, or Pancakeswap). Users can contribute by entering data into these structures and will be rewarded through these contributions, which will have to be validated.

The business model of the protocol is based on the sale of tokens to third parties that would want to use the validated data for different reasons. Given the volatility of the cryptocurrency market, these institutions will be able to acquire and burn said tokens for stable credits that allow them to store this right to data access in a safer fashion.

While the protocol is currently in testnet, it has reportedly managed to gather the attention of 35,000 users already using the app and participating in data submission and validation, and is expected to launch in mainnet in Q3 2023.