5th October 2023 - Phaver, the gateway to Web3 social with support for decentralized social graphs such as Aave Company’s Lens Protocol and CyberConnect, plus various other on-chain assets like NFTs, announced it has closed a $7 million seed funding round. The backers of the company include Polygon Ventures, Nomad Capital, Symbolic Capital, dao5, Foresight Ventures, Alphanonce, f.actor, Superhero Capital and many others. Among the investors SwissBorg also shared their allocation with community members, allowing thousands of users to receive a small share of the round, an opportunity where the public allocation sold out in 8 seconds.
Having debuted in May 2022 during Lens’s mainnet launch, Phaver’s “Web2.5” mobile app allows anyone to sign up with familiar Web2 logins and without a crypto wallet, onboarding users to Web3 in a step-by-step way, connecting an on-chain Lens profile or showcasing their NFT collection. To date, Phaver’s app has received more than 250,000 downloads and has a passionate community who keep making over 50,000 posts each day, making it one of the most active applications in the Web3 space.
With decentralized social protocols, such as Lens, anyone can create a permissionless, non-custodial social media profile, retain ownership of their social graph and content and move across different platforms. Unlike Web2 socials where data is siloed in one app that controls all of it, a Lens profile cannot be taken away or deleted at any point. This creates a permanent blockchain-stored backup of the user’s social graph that can be used across numerous apps.
As the first native mobile app on Lens, Phaver offers users a familiar feel and feature set that enables a soft landing in Web3 social. This has enabled Phaver to become the largest Lens mobile app by a wide margin, while also onboarding a large base of users who are still waiting for their coveted Lens social profile NFT. Phaver is an early pioneer in Web3 social, designed to help users cultivate their reputation within and across decentralized social networks, rewarding them with points for each constructive contribution they make on the platform. Within months of launching, Phaver Cred, the app’s reputation system, saw users connecting over 75,000 wallets with over $50 million of stored value. The first version of Cred supports Ethereum as well as Polygon, who also invested in the round, with more chains such as Binance Chain being added in the near future.
One of the unique features of Phaver is its gamified rewards mechanism, which aims to fairly reward not only content creators, but also helpful curators and moderators who are a vital part of the social ecosystem. By making users feel appreciated through the distribution of rewards, Phaver is uniquely positioned to attract key opinion leaders and influencers, who, especially in the crypto space, are regularly demonetized or even blocked by Web2 social platforms.
With incentivized contributions, gamified rewards and reputation-based mechanics, Phaver aims to provide the most relevant content to each user’s feed in a novel way that is less prone to manipulation. As users increase their credibility on the platform, they become eligible for more and more perks, including the ability to convert earned points into the platform’s native tokens following its Token Generation Event.
“Web3 is all about user ownership, and with ownership come a lot of rights, one of which is using your own data wherever you want,” said Phaver’s CEO & co-founder Joonatan Lintala. “Phaver’s mission is to connect the entire Web3 by allowing users to bring in their own building blocks for their social graph, whether that means building credibility with a decentralized ID, finding community among holders of the same collectibles or building relationships across the entire internet with on-chain social layers like Lens. Users, who now own crucial pieces of the social network, also deserve their fair share of the pie and should be heard in important decisions.”
“We are thrilled to partner with this select group of value-adding investors and partners, building the ecosystem together with our incredible community” commented Phaver’s CFO & co-founder Tomi Fyrqvist. “The internet hasn’t been in such an exciting phase since the start of the century - and web3 technologies allow for the opportunity to build more meritocratic systems in the next-gen user-owned decentralized web, where the ownership of digital assets and online social life is redefined. We are looking forward to this next wave, where pioneers like Lens and CyberConnect are igniting the transition with a social protocol layer, whilst the underlying infrastructure, such as Polygon, BNB Chain and Ethereum, ultimately secures them.”
Sandeep Nailwal, co-founder of Polygon, also commented: “Given Polygon's focus on driving web3 adoption with infrastructure for the best gaming and social applications, we're excited to partner with Phaver to further our mission of onboarding more users to a decentralized, community-owned internet.”
“It’s great to see Phaver’s commitment to Web3 social," said Founder of Aave Companies and Lens Protocol Stani Kulechov. “Phaver has done a great job of attracting users, creatives and curators, creating a dynamic environment that is easy to join, interact within and receive rewards for participation. We congratulate Phaver on their continued momentum in Web3 social.”
As part of the private round, one of the investors, SwissBorg, also offered members of its and Phaver’s community the opportunity to participate at investor valuations. This community private sale 10x oversubscribed the first allocations in 8 seconds and made the combined community tickets the largest individual share of the round. This fits with Phaver’s goal of building things in a more ethical and user-centric way and offering everyone the opportunity normally reserved for large ticket funds, without expecting the community to fund the entire round. Following the launch of its native token, Phaver will be able to fine-tune its in-app economy with an initial focus on crypto-natives, before targeting a more mainstream audience.
About Phaver
Phaver is building the gateway to Web3 social by allowing anyone to access on-chain social graphs like Lens Protocol and CyberConnect, even before connecting a crypto wallet. By connecting wallets, users can not only build their social reputation and graph but also back up their social actions on multiple blockchains and receive many valuable perks as they level up in the gamified app. With the launch of Phaver’s in-app loyalty program, Phaver Cred, users will also finally be rewarded fairly for their contributions to social media.
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