Golden Generates $40M in Series B Funding Led by a16z

Web3 crypto startup Golden has garnered $40 million in a Series B funding round led by VC firm Andreessen Horowitz (a16z). The web3 crypto firm announced the financing in a blog post published on 3rd October. According to Golden, the funding round led by a16z was a total of $60 million. The company plans to use the funds to build a decentralized and incentivized data protocol. Golden will incorporate mechanics from web3 into the system to get data into a new protocol. 

a16z, Others, Back Golden in Series B Funding

Apart from a16z, other contributors to the Golden $40 million Series B funding comprise crypto experts, founders, operators, and the firm’s existing investors. Individual backers include Solana founder Raj Gokal, and Protocol Labs founder Juan Benet. Figma CEO Dylan Field, Maryanna Saenko of Futures Ventures, and more were also participants.

Before the funding round, a16z co-founder Marc Andreessen had been a board member at Golden. Now, the startup said the VC firm’s partner Ali Yahya would also be joining the board. Speaking on the latest investment round led by a16z, Golden CEO Jude Gomila wrote:

“Knowledge is fragmented; to find reliable information, one needs to search across centralized repositories, personal webpages, news sites, blogs, and private databases. The world lacks a standardized interface for discovering, contributing and verifying knowledge. Creating this interface in a scalable way requires not just data; it requires the development of incentives for data entry, verification, and governance. Web3 technologies and mechanics are well suited to solve the core problems of incentivizing efficient task execution and organizing resources for protocol operations.”

Furthermore, the CEO revealed that the Golden protocol is now in the testnet phase. He added that 35,000 individuals are currently submitting facts and validating information through its live decentralized app (the dApp) Discord community. These individuals are also participating in the company’s API’s and early governance in action toward building and improving the protocol. 

Golden Offer Rewards to Protocol Participants

According to the official announcement, participants in the Golden protocol will receive financial rewards for their contributions. The web3 startup has designed the protocol to offer incentives for agents to converge on the truth. While participants who submit correct data get rewards, people who submit incorrect data are penalized. 

“Organizations using and paying for the data provide a direct feedback loop for converging on correctness as well as dynamic market pricing. We use the blockchain to construct a ledger of the transactions and eventually the data itself. Tokenization allows for incentives to be awarded to good actors adding correct data into the system and to validators verifying the data accuracy.”

Also, Golden said it uses a mechanism of slashing to “provide downside” for wrong data submission and validation.