Social Media Startup by Ex-Coinbase Execs Nears $1B Valuation

• Merkle is finalizing a funding spherical that may worth the agency round $1 billion.
• Merkle was co-founded by Dan Romero and Varun Srinivasan, two former executives at Coinbase.
• In July 2022, Merkle secured a $30 million funding in a funding spherical led by a16z Crypto.

Merkle Manufactory, the brainchild of two former Coinbase executives, is on the point of finalizing a funding spherical that may worth the corporate at roughly $1 billion. Sources conversant in the matter revealed that crypto funding agency Paradigm is spearheading the funding within the Los Angeles-based agency. 

Notably, Merkle Manufactory is the corporate behind the infrastructure of the Farcaster social media community. Dan Romero, a co-founder of Merkle and an ex-vice president at Coinbase, affirmed in a social media put up on March 29 that the startup is certainly within the means of elevating funds. Nevertheless, he kept away from specifying the precise quantity. 

“I wished to let everybody know that Merkle Manufactory is closing a brand new spherical of financing. I’ll share extra particulars quickly,” Romero remarked in a put up on Warpcast, the Farcaster app developed by Merkle.

Merkle was co-founded in 2020 alongside Varun Srinivasan, a former senior director at Coinbase. The corporate goals for a decentralized public sq. devoid of centralized management. Merkle’s two major choices embody the Farcaster protocol built-in with a blockchain part and Warpcast, an software layered atop Farcaster mirroring X, the social media platform beforehand acknowledged as Twitter. 

In July 2022, Merkle secured funding in a $30 million funding spherical led by a16z Crypto, marking its final capital increase. Throughout a current podcast, Romero emphasised that Farcaster’s core philosophy revolves round a protocol devoid of singular management by any particular person, entity, or nation. He asserted that such situations signify the enduring equilibrium for the worldwide public sq..

Knowledge reveals that Farcaster’s every day energetic customers skyrocketed to over 50,000 in early February from fewer than 10,000 the previous month. 

In January, the Farcaster ecosystem unveiled Frames, a novel function empowering builders to seamlessly combine exterior app functionalities inside Warpcast with out disrupting consumer expertise.