$24M at a $160M valuation Shopify and Coinbase for its web3
Thirdweb — which has operations in London but is based in
San Francisco — plans to use the funding to continue improving its developer
toolkit — which currently has about 10 features covering areas such as smart
contracts, decentralized communications, deployment hardware and more — to
expand support to a much broader scale. of blockchains, to attract additional
customers and grow its portfolio, both through assignments and possibly
acquisitions, all with the aim of making web3 more widespread.
The Thirdweb website has only been in use for 9 months, but
it's doing well: co-founder Stephen Bartlett told TechCrunch that to date about
fifty-five thousand creators — ranging from indie creators to companies like Afterpay
and New York Fashion Week — have built various NFTs and DAO and other games and
programs that use its framework. Since this week, about one hundred and fifty
thousand smart contracts have been deployed on six blockchains. (And, in case
you were wondering, Polygon is currently the most popular: “Cheaper prices are
the honest answer,” he said.)
Combined, the projects generate $1.5 million in sales per
week, although the third web doesn't always profit from that. Meanwhile, there
are no third-party fees or commissions, with the only exception being that some
third-party enterprise customers pay fees as part of their sourcing policies,
Bartlett said.
The funding that has been introduced these days is also
showing some momentum. The round is being jointly led with help from Haun
Ventures (the company founded by former a16z partner Katie Haun), as well as
strategic backers Coinbase Ventures and Shopify.
Coinbase has already been working with the third web — for
example, the latter provides an optimization platform for creators to create
NFTs for the Coinbase NFT — and this could bring the two together.
Shopify, meanwhile, "views us as an investment but also
as a companion," Bartlett said. Announced that there could be an
integration in the works as a third web toolkit will be made available to
Shopify customers who need to offer Web3 products to complement or within
Shopify-powered storefronts.
These three are part of a long list of buyers who have
backed Thirdweb in its $5 million seed round (the organization includes Mark
Cuban, Gary Vaynerchuk, and more).
The gap in the market that Third Web is addressing is one
Bartlett said he and co-founder Furqan Redhan saw when they were trying to
build a blockchain application themselves.
"We've noted the hard work it took to build the
software from the ground up," said Bartlett. He compares the lack of
equipment needed to speed up the blockchain coatings to the early days of the
network as we know it today, when humans also needed to code websites and all
the functions within them, from scratch, unlike today. Everyday situations
where, for example, you can combine payment drift with just a few pieces of
code and an API that plugs into technology built and run by someone else. Or
sure, build an entire website using an engine like WordPress or Wix.
The opportunity becomes specific: build the same kind of
tools for Web 3.
We figured we might want to launch what we built to run on
our personal application as a product,” Bartlett said. “We wanted to provide
blockchain developers with the same kind of easy-to-use infrastructure and
amenities that they have in Web2.”
The past experiences of the founders may also have played a
role here. Bartlett likes to tackle possibilities after they begin to emerge:
He's been an early adopter and promoter of social media, and in particular.