Golden, a startup looking to build a distributed data hub, has raised $40 million in a Series B funding round led by a16z crypto. the company can continue to build its concept around combining data submission and validation with web3-based token incentives.
Golden raises $40 million to build a distributed encyclopedia
Decentralized data hub company Golden has announced that it has raised $40 million in its latest Series B funding roundled by a16z crypto, which includes funding from Opensea Ventures, Solana, Protocol Labs, and many big names in the VC industry, including leaders associated with Figma, among others.
The company, which seeks to pair Web3 with building a robust and verifiable information hub, plans to use the funding to continue building a business model built around providing customers with trusted data. According to Golden’s CEO and founder Jude Gomila, this is because the current data mining model has proven to be unreliable.
Gomila believes the only way to build this global data repository is to create incentives for users to contribute to the initiative. Golden provides a protocol that rewards users for validating and submitting data, ostensibly as a way to punish people for bringing fake data into the system. It also has a mechanism to reward users who submit the most used and requested data with more rewards. In this way, we incentivize the introduction of useful data.
Business Model
The operation of the protocol involves a public with information about any concept included in the network (e.g. Coinbase, Open Source Software, or Pancakeswap) NFTs (non-fungible tokens) are included. Users can contribute by entering data into these structures and can be rewarded through these contributions, but this would have to be verified.
The business model of the protocol is based on the sale of tokens to third parties who may wish to use the verified data for various reasons. Given the volatility of the cryptocurrency market, these institutions can acquire and burn said tokens for stable credits that allow them to preserve this right of data access in a more secure way.
The protocol is currently on a test net, but has reportedly already managed to attract the attention of 35,000 users who are using the app and participating in data submission and verification, and is expected to launch on the main net in the third quarter of 2023.
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