VANCOUVER, British Columbia--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Big Whale Labs a web 3 social startup, announced today that it has raised $655,000 in pre-seed funding led by Slow Ventures with participation from Samsung Next, Intonation Ventures, NFT Investments PLC, and angels including Anton Bukov and Sergej Kunz, co-founders of 1inch Network; Alex Shin cofounder of Hashed, Korea’s largest Crypto VC; and more.
Big Whale Labs is using web 3 technologies to reimagine what digital identity, the social graph, and network could be. Their first product allows people to build and interact as pseudonymous NFT identities but with verified credentials and reputations attached to these NFTs. Their tool will be built on the Ethereum blockchain.
"Big Whale Labs’ mission is to enhance human-to-human connection online to make social more safe, fun, secure, and free," said co-founder and CEO Jason Kim. "Our goal with Big Whale Labs is to both enhance how web 3 communities interact on web 2 platforms like Discord and Telegram and to also introduce new mechanisms that are completely native to web 3 like owning fractional identities, your social graph, and pseudonymous but verified credentials."
Nikita Kolmogorov, Co-founder, and CTO of Big Whale Labs most recently exited his Telegram Bot to 1inch Networks after scaling it to 20 million users, which was the largest Telegram Bot transaction to date. The pair were former college floormates who worked on iOS apps together nearly a decade ago and came together to build Big Whale Labs.
"I know Nikita as one of the most focused serial entrepreneurs who have a proven track record and an understanding of how to achieve the most challenging goals," said Anton Bukov, Cofounder of 1inch Network, "Social networks are the area yet to be disrupted by decentralized technologies, while Nikita and Jason are totally equipped to accomplish this endeavor. And I’m happy to be part of the future revolution!"
"Currently, my products are being used by over 60 million people globally," said CTO Nikita Kolmogorov, “I’ve seen firsthand how many DAOs and crypto communities interact and believe there should be much better tooling to support these communities and people."
The company plans to use the new funding to accelerate product development as it gears up to launch its first product and tools.
