OpenSocial Protocol’s $5M Raise to Advance SocialFi Super Apps, Powered by EVG’s $15M Fund

OpenSocial Protocol (OpenSocial), an innovative infrastructure layer for social applications, has raised $5 million in a seed funding round. This funding, which began in December 2023 and concluded in January 2024, was led by Portal Ventures and SNZ Capital, both notable for their early investments in Ethereum, Chainlink, Cosmos, Arbitrum, Polkadot, and Dfinity. Other investors include Animoca Brands, Awesome People Ventures, Arche Fund, Decima Fund, Moonrock Capital, OKX Ventures, Orange DAO, Panony, and Summer Ventures.

Support from Key Investors and Entrepreneurs

Among the angel investors are well-known figures in the web3 space such as Smokey the Bera, Brian Fabian Crain, Mike Dudas, Martin El-Khouri, Roham Gharegozlou, Don Ho, Mable Jiang, Adam Jin, Serge Kassardjian, and Jason Yano.

OpenSocial Protocol was established by Everest Ventures Group (EVG), one of Asia’s largest web3 operating groups focused on consumer applications. EVG’s team includes over 300 full-time developers from tech giants like Alibaba, ByteDance, Tencent, and NetEase, and they support more than 2 million users across their products. EVG is also an early backer of Animoca Brands, the Sandbox, and Dapper Labs.

EVG has committed $15 million to an ecosystem fund aimed at fostering development on OpenSocial. Additionally, 30 of EVG’s top developers are working on the project, alongside 50 external developers.

Understanding OpenSocial Protocol

OpenSocial, launched in 2023, is an open-source social infrastructure layer for web3 social experiences. It aims to provide developers with the tools to quickly and economically build social dApps using a multichain approach. The modular design includes features like feeds, chatrooms, comments, social graphs, tribes, megaphones, and various plug-ins for token issuance, DAO tools, and more.

“These modules and tools are designed to provide both an emotionally captivating and financially rewarding social experience covering accessibility, ownership, and monetization opportunities to end users and communities,” stated Sean Tao, Co-Founder of OpenSocial Protocol.

A soon-to-be-unveiled feature will focus on the portability and self-sovereignty of identities and communities across different ecosystems.

The potential for SocialFi to become the largest consumer use case for web3, especially in Asia, is significant. The internet’s evolution shows that social platforms can rise to dominance. In the early days of the consumer internet (1997-2003), marketplaces and portals were prevalent, but social platforms surged post dot-com bubble (2004-2010) as adoption grew.

“Importantly, Asia represents more than half of the world’s social media users, with nearly 3 billion people actively using social platforms every day. We think SocialFi’s ‘Axie moment’ will happen this cycle and likely take place in Asia,” said Allen Ng, CEO of EVG and Co-Founder of OpenSocial Protocol.

With the $15 million ecosystem fund, OpenSocial has already launched its first dApp, SoMon (“Social Monster”), a decentralized forum owned by users and communities. Upcoming platforms include Zeek, a decentralized collaboration network for on-chain social bounty and reputation, supported by OKX Ventures and Animoca Brands.

Evan Fisher, Founder & Managing Partner of Portal Ventures, remarked, “OpenSocial combines lessons from leading Asia consumer internet businesses like WeChat with a deep understanding of crypto native preferences. The team is building an infrastructure layer that will power an ecosystem of new, community-driven social experiences. Users demand novel financialized experiences – OpenSocial makes that possible.”

Gavin Wang, CIO of SNZ Capital, added, “In the last five years, EVG has grown from a start-up to one of the largest web3 consumer groups in Asia. OpenSocial is the flagship project of EVG and the team is building multiple dApps on top, which we believe could be the right product at the right time for the right team to deliver.”

Ken Kitahara, Co-founder & General Partner of Decima Fund, stated, “We are proud to back OpenSocial in its endeavor to empower creators and developers to build social capital and innovate at the forefront of SocialFi.”

Thanh Le, Founder of Ninety Eight, emphasized the regional impact, “OpenSocial is well-positioned to fill the social need with its modular, community-owned approach tailored for mobile-first markets like Vietnam.”