Polygon, Reddit Co-Founder's VC Firm Launch $200 Million Social Media Web3 Fund

The team behind Polygon, the protocol dedicated to interconnected blockchain networks like Ethereum, and Alexis Ohanian’s Seven Seven Six venture capital company have revealed a $200 million investment fund in blockchain-based social media projects. According to the announcement, the partner’s mission is to attempt to bridge blockchain, Web3 technology, and social media together.

Polygon and Alexis Ohanian’s Seven Seven Six Launch $200 Million Fund Dedicated to Web3, Blockchain, and Social Media

Polygon and Alexis Ohanian’s firm Seven Seven Six plan to bolster Web3 technology with social media via blockchain compatibility with an investment of $200 million, according to the Polygon team’s most recent blog post. Polygon is best known for its scaling enhancements with the open-source blockchain network Ethereum and its native token called MATIC. Alexis Ohanian is well known for co-founding the social media and news aggregation web portal Reddit with Steve Huffman and Aaron Swartz. Ohanian’s venture capital company Seven Seven Six is a software-enabling venture firm founded in 2020.

“Polygon and Alexis Ohanian’s Seven Seven Six have created a $200 million initiative that will back projects at the intersection of social media and Web3, exploring better ways for humans to connect online,” the Polygon team detailed on Friday. “The motivating force behind Web3 is that a better version of the Internet is possible, one which empowers users over platforms. It is a response to a pervading sense that the current instantiation as represented by the social media giants has strayed too far from the early Web’s open-source ideals.”

The Polygon team added:

The result is, as one Facebook engineer famously quipped, the best minds of our generation are thinking about how to make people click ads. Polygon’s mission is to offer a wide range of secure, fast, affordable, and energy-efficient Ethereum scaling and infrastructure solutions for developers, empowering them to build Web3 applications for the world.

Alexis Ohanian: ‘Web3’s Most Obvious Opportunities Right Now Are Gaming and Social’

The announcement to invest $200 million into social media and blockchain platforms follows Polygon’s recent acquistion of the Mir protocol. After previously acquiring the Hermez Network (now Polygon Hermez) for $250 million in August, Polygon paid $400 million for the Ethereum scaling startup Mir. Ohanian’s venture firm, Seven Seven Six, has a number of investments in blockchain and Web3 including Sky Mavis, Droneseed, Better Brand, and Stoke Space. Ohanian recently backed the NFT project Heir co-founded by NBA legend ​​Michael Jordan and his son Jeffrey Jordan.

“We are still in the early days of Web3 and the most obvious opportunities right now are in gaming and social,” Ohanian said in a statement. “This initiative will do just that, with a focus on gaming properties and social media platforms built on Polygon’s scalable infrastructure. We’ve already seen some of the best product founders in our portfolio start building on Polygon and I’m excited for Seven Seven Six and Polygon to play a big role in shaping what the new internet looks like,” the co-founder of Reddit concluded.