Irene Zhao’s So-Col Raised $4.5M in Two Funding Rounds

A web3 social platform called So-Col (Social Collectibles), established by crypto influencer Irene Zhao, revealed $4.5 million in fresh funding across two rounds.

The latest round which raised $1.5 million, was single-handedly sponsored by DWF, the web3 investment company claimed on Tuesday. So-Col also raised $3 million last May in a round led by Blockchain Capital, Zhao revealed to The Block in an interview. The May round was conducted at a $100 million valuation. Zhao’s So-Col aims to supercharge influencers’ output with NFTs.

The DWF round upholds So-Col’s entire funding to date to $6.25 million, following the startup’s seed funding of $1.75 million in February 2022. All three funding rounds were token rounds, where investors bought So-Col’s simp tokens.

DWF Labs has been massively supporting token rounds. It has till now, invested in more than 15 startups in the last few months, which include companies like Conflux, Network, Orbs, and Synthetix. Tokens of most of these startups increased in price following DWF, which is a big name in the market, revealing its investments. DWF initially invested in So-Col in February of this year. Its investment has a one-year vesting period, which officially concludes in February 2024.

Zhao, an Instagram model, and entrepreneur explained how NFTs can be used to monetize a social media following when she launched a collection named IreneDAO. About twenty-six hundred ether (worth $6.5 million) of these digital stickers, showcasing Zhao in different poses followed by crypto catchphrases, have shifted to OpenSea. Zhao called the IreneDAO project a proof of concept for the So-Col platform.

Following the recent investment from DWF, Ethereum-based So-Col wants to go multichain and support more Layer 1 and Layer 2 blockchains.  As a web3 social platform, So-Col allows creators and brands to utilize NFTs, called collectibles on its platform, as a basis for memberships and exclusive content.

So-Col presently has a community of 300 creators leveraging the platform, according to Zhao, who said the scheme is to onboard more creators by incentivizing them with simp tokens and cash payments.

Established by Zhao and co-founder Benjamin Tang, So-Col locked its $1.75 Million seed round with Animoca Brands and DeFiance Capital being the lead sponsors. The firm is functioning with Stripe to provide convenient payment methods for fans, and with StarkEx, the Ethereum scaling platform to lower creator fees.

So-Col’s simp token was listed on KuCoin in January, and the platform plans to list the token on several other exchanges including Binance, OKX, ByBit, and Bitget.