Merkle Manufactory’s Dan Romero has announced that the firm has raised $30 million from a funding round led by Andreessen Horowitz, with participation from other angel investors, including Coinbase Ventures, 1confirmation, Multicoin Capital, and more. The funds will be used to further build Farcaster, the firm’s decentralized protocol for social network development.
Merkle Manufactory Secures $30 Million
Despite the ongoing crypto markets bloodbath that has snuffed out life from various big names in the industry, it appears investor confidence in the blockchain space remains solid, as large VC firms have continued to pump in millions of dollars into distributed ledger technology (DLT) projects
In the latest development, Merkle Manufactory, a startup led by Dan Romeo, a former Coinbase vice president, has secured $30 million in a funding round led by Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), with participation from other angel investors and VC firms including Standard Crypto, Elad Gil, 1confirmation, Scalar Capital, First Round Capital, Balaji Srinivasan, Ribbit Capital, Coinbase Ventures and more.
Romero and his Merkle Manufactory team plan to use the funds to further develop Farcaster, a decentralized protocol for the development of social networks. Romero wrote:
“Two years ago, Varun [Srinivasan] and I started working together on an idea called RSS+. Our goal was to build a credibly-neutral protocol where users have direct relationships with their audiences and developers have the freedom to permissionlessly build new clients. We went through a few iterations and ultimately built Farcaster, a sufficiently decentralized protocol for building social networks.”
Romero says that he and his team have successfully launched the initial versions of the Farcaster protocol as well as functional clients that are currently being used by some people. The raised funds will now be dedicated to the development of Farcaster v2, which the team plans to roll out before the end of 2022.
Source: https://crypto.news/merkle-manufactory-30m-16z-others-farcaster-social-protocol-launch/