Blockchain

Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian pledges $100m to fund Facebook Meta rivals on Solana

Alexis Ohanian’s Seven Seven Six has partnered with Solana Ventures to pledge $100m in grant funding for Solana-based Web 3.0 social projects.

The Breakpoint Conference announcement follows the huge news surrounding Mark Zuckerberg’s ‘Meta’ – and the Facebook CEO’s plans to monetise the successor of mobile internet.

Raj Gokal, the Solana Labs COO, explained that Ohanian’s ethos was to accelerate projects that embody the core tenants of Web 3.0, focusing on empowering users with collaborative ownership and creation.

“Web3 turns users and creators into owners and stakeholders, a change that can’t come soon enough to social media,” he explained.

“Social media in the metaverse will be a collection of millions of self-sufficient communities, and there’s nobody better to help great teams build that future than Alexis Ohanian.”

The big focus is on eliminating value extraction from third-party centralised intermediaries.

Solana will herald new era of social engagement on Web 3.0

Speaking at Breakpoint, Alexis Ohanian explained how Seven Seven Six would work with the Solana blockchain to deliver a new era of social engagement.

“Seven Seven Six has a proven expertise in identifying and investing in early social and crypto trends – whether that’s building the largest online community (Reddit) or being the first check into sector-defining start-ups like Patreon (creator economy) and Coinbase (crypto),” explained Ohanian.

“With a high-performance blockchain like Solana, there is an unprecedented opportunity to fuse social and crypto in a way that feels like a web2 social product but with the added incentive of empowering users with real ownership.

“We are at a pivotal inflection point in these early days of Web3 and I couldn’t be more energised to partner with Solana to support companies who are building for this exciting new era of social.”