The Convergence of Crypto and AI: Four Key Intersections
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The worlds of cryptocurrency and artificial intelligence (AI) have been evolving in parallel, with each domain pushing the boundaries of technology and innovation. As we continue to make strides in both fields, it is becoming increasingly clear that their futures are inextricably linked. In this post, we will explore four important intersections at the crossroads of crypto and AI.
From UGC to UGP: Consumer Brands & Co-Creation
Many have argued how co-creation will ultimately lead to the democratization of the creator class, re-imagine fandom, and turn fans into creators; however, this discussion stops short of the implications of co-creation on brands, which could be larger than the impact on co-creators themselves. In the past, brands created products and, more generally, culture, and proliferated this top-down via centralized, top-down media (Toby Shorin).
Web3-Native SQL
In the first wave of crypto innovation after Bitcoin, many developers forked the Bitcoin codebase to try to build other decentralized infrastructure and applications beyond digital gold. Some of the earliest forks included attempts at building decentralized databases that could be used for general purpose application development. In the wave of crypto innovation that followed Ethereum’s launch, teams began building BFT database engines.
Multiplayer Mode
Today, we are proud to announce our investment in Lore, the first co-ownership platform for web3 collectives. We led a $4M round alongside North Island Ventures, Seed Club Ventures, Balaji Srinivasan, Zeneca, Mischief Ventures, Sfermion, CMT Digital, Patricio Worthalter, Spice Capital, Sublime Ventures, and others.
Our Investment in Seed Club Ventures, a Venture DAO
Today, we are proud to announce our investment in Seed Club Ventures (SCV), a $25M venture DAO that invests in internet-native organizations, alongside Delphi Digital, Dragonfly Capital, Collab+Currency, SV Angel, Distributed Global, and others. SCV will be exclusively focused on early stage teams building communities, infrastructure and applications that leverage Web3 primitives to accelerate financial and human capital coordination to achieve their missions.
New Investment Partners at Multicoin
Today I’d like to announce that two of our longest standing members of our investment team, Spencer Applebaum (LinkedIn, Twitter) and Shayon Sengupta (LinkedIn, Twitter), have been promoted to Investment Partner. Both of them have done great work in finding lucrative trades in public markets, and in sourcing and winning competitive deals in private markets. But most importantly, both have also worked closely with many of our founders over the past several years to help them succeed.
Onboarding The Next Billion Users To Crypto Rails
Today, we’re announcing we co-led TipLink’s $6M seed round with Sequoia. Our colleagues from Circle Ventures, Solana Ventures, Paxos, Asymmetric, Big Brain Ventures, Karatage and Monke Ventures also participated in the round. Nick Grossman wrote a thesis we’re fond of called The Butter Thesis which he defines as interactions and experiences that are super smooth—rich, easy, delicious.
Full Stack, Decentralized Security
The design space of cyber security is vast. There are an infinite number of attack vectors across chips and instruction sets, operating systems, runtimes, and applications. And naturally, there are many large cybersecurity companies. When I first got into Ethereum in 2016, the only real cybersecurity companies were smart contract auditors. Human audits have been and always will be paramount. However, human audits are not enough.
The Web3 Growth Stack
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We’ve become increasingly interested in a category of innovation that we’re internally calling the Web3 Growth Stack—i.e., the tools that product managers and marketers use to acquire, engage and retain customers using Web3 technologies. In Web2, the growth stack consists of a plethora of tools, platforms, and analytics systems designed to help product and marketing leaders augment growth.
Unlocking Payments Over Crypto Rails
Since the advent of Bitcoin, people have been talking about the inevitability of crypto-based payments. And yet, 13 years since the launch of Bitcoin, payments over crypto rails have not yet entered mainstream consciousness. Why have crypto payments struggled? And why is that changing now?
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