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Lines, a new crypto messaging platform, raised $4 million in an initial round led by the former vice president of Twitter (the social network is blocked in Russia, owned by Meta — the company is recognized as extremist in russia) Elad Gil, according to its co-founder Sahil Handa.
“There is a rapidly growing number of people using crypto aliases to buy digital currency, exchange NFT, vote on proposals and manage the treasury,” Handa, who is also ceo of Lines, said in an email today. “The problem is that whenever someone tries to communicate with another person on that network, it’s impossible to know if they’re talking to the right person.”
According to him, this is one of the reasons why millions of dollars are lost due to hacks and fraud, because, among other problems, web3 native identification does not have a verifiable communication platform.
Handa said he and the other two co-founders of Lines, all of whom studied philosophy at Harvard, are working to solve the problem by “creating an app that allows you to send wallet-to-wallet messages and join group chats based on tokens you own.”
According to a recent techCrunch report, lead investor Gil said that one of the “most interesting parts of cryptography right now” is the “intersection of social messaging and web3.” He added that today’s messaging tools may not be adequate, so there are opportunities to do it right.
Other round participants included Hash3, Scalar Capital, Volt Capital, Caffeinated Capital, Ethereal Ventures, Mischief, Naval Ravikant, Balaji Srinivasan and Gokul Rajaram.
“As the user navigates through different DAO apps and NFT platforms,” Handa said, their lines incoming messages will follow them in the browser, allowing them to start communicating with users who own the same tokens as them or are members of the same communities.
He added:
“Crucially, your identity lines can remain verifiable, pseudonymous and secure: you control exactly which parts of your identity you share, but you can always easily prove that you have the currency or token you’re talking about.”
However, Lines can compete with other web3 messaging apps, as Gil told TechCrunch that he is aware of “various teams working on identity, social layers, and communication on top of web3.”
The company follows a number of other firms trying to create web3 social media offerings. Last week, Merkle Manufactory announced a $30 million raise to develop a social networking protocol called Farcaster. Lens Protocol was also launched with the goal of creating a foundation for honest, transparent and composable social applications.
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