Ethereum-based Twitter rival Farcaster raises $150 million

Farcastera decentralized social media protocol, announced a $150 million Series A funding round on Tuesday, giving a major boost to the fast-growing network’s development plans.

The funding round was led by Paradigm, with participation from investment firms including Andreessen Horowitz’s a16z Crypto Fund, Haun Ventures, Union Square Ventures, Variant, and Standard Crypto. Farcaster said Non-chain cryptocurrency The raise values ​​the startup at $1 billion, making it the latest cryptocurrency unicorn.

in Posted TuesdayFarcaster co-founder Dan Romero explained the company’s priorities for the newly raised capital: “We are focused on two things for the rest of the year: growing our daily active users and adding developer fundamentals to our protocols such as channels and direct messaging.”

This announcement follows the permissionless launch of Farcaster in October 2023, which opened up the protocol to all developers and users. Since then, Farcaster has seen significant growth, with 350,000 paid subscriptions and a 50x increase in network activity. The network is built on: optimism, Ethereum Layer 2 scaling network.

Farcaster was founded in 2020 by Coinbase alumni Romero and Varun Srinivasan. It has attracted significant interest since early 2024. frame releaseThe ability to bring in features like issuing NFTs or playing games from external apps without the user having to leave their social feed.

Editor’s note: This article was created with the help of AI. Editing and Fact Checking Andrew Hayward.