Quick take:
The fundraising also attracted participation from Accomplice, Anagram and Legion Capital, with more than 30 angel investors joining.
Icebreaker wants to build a network that redefines how professionals and companies discover exceptional people within their networks.
Users can easily prove credentials about themselves and provide verifiable endorsements for others.
Icebreaker has secured a $5 million seed round led by CoinFund with participation from Accomplice, Anagram, Legion Capital and more than 30 angel investors.
The web3 startup is building an open professional network powered by Farcaster. The platform leverages blockchain technology to provide a new perspective on how professionals and companies discover exceptional people within their networks.
The platform enables professionals to easily prove credentials about themselves and provide verifiable endorsements for others. They can also use the same context to search the entirety of their networks for matching talents.
“The world runs on trust,” said Icebreaker co-founder, Dan Stone. “Until now, it’s been impossible to see because our existing networks optimize for engagement over signal. Yet every leader knows the loudest or most followed person is rarely the best. Icebreaker lets you see who your close network trusts so you can cut through the noise to surface the talent and opportunities that are quiet, yet exceptional.”
Jack Dillé co-founder of Icebreaker added: “Existing platforms make it intentionally difficult to build and use our own connections, and often require us to pay just to navigate our own network. We have a core belief that data should be completely user-controlled, where people decide exactly what and how much they want to share with their connections, with no third-party intervention.”
Icebreaker has already piloted engagements of its platform in collaboration with Web3 companies including Coinbase, Opensea, and Polygon Labs, and at industry conferences like DevConnect in Istanbul and FarCon in Santa Monica, the company wrote in a press release on Wednesday.
However, Dan and Jack aren’t the only ones trying to build a Web3 version of LinkedIn. Last month, Ignacio Palomera’s Bondex announced a $10.5 million fundraising to build a blockchain-based talent marketplace to be powered by the BDNX token.
Icebreaker has already achieved key milestones after debuting its first Passport program at Station13, a Web3 co-working startup. Founder Bob Loukas managed to track verified engagement with Station3 programming, enabling him to determine whether members were physically at Manhattan headquarters or checking in digitally from around the world, according to the press release.
Commenting on his firm’s leading role in the seed round, Alex Felix, Chief Investment Officer, CoinFund said in a statement: “One of the next significant use cases for crypto is to develop foundational social graphs for applications to leverage, and we’re excited about the blueprint being created by Icebreaker for digital trust and identity on the internet. We are proud to back Dan, Jack and their team in their mission to introduce true ownership of professional identity to everyone online.”
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The post CoinFund Leads $5M Seed for Web3 Startup Building Blockchain’s Version of LinkedIn appeared first on NFTgators .
