By James Davis
Web2 social media apps, like Twitter and Instagram, are designed to connect people. However, the connectivity comes with a heavy price as the users’ data is used to sell advertisements. Towns, a Web3 project by startup Here Not There Labs, is aiming to solve that. The project wants to bring messaging to the blockchain.
Who participated in the Funding Round?
Today, Towns developers announced they had raised more than $24 million. One of the backers is the prominent venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz.
General partner at Andreessen Horowitz, Sriram Krishnan, said the firm decided to invest in Towns because of the developers’ vision for building a digital town through blockchain technology where users can set rules, define the borders, and create the world they desire.
Other venture capitalists who participated include Framework Ventures and Benchmark.
What Here Not There Labs Seeks to Solve
Here Not There Labs began its operations in 2021. Rubin, the ex-CEO of Houseparty and Meerkat, co-founded it alongside Brian Meek, Skype’s ex-head of engineering. The pair describes Towns as an app intended for online communities to communicate freely by employing end-to-end encryption.
According to the co-founders, any online group can chat freely on Towns without worrying that the firm will change the rules or profit from their activity. This will help solve the problem faced when communicating through web2 messaging apps like Discord, where everything is subject to their terms of service.
Brains Behind Towns Project Reveal Their Plan for DAO
Further, Towns developers revealed that there would be a DAO (decentralized autonomous organization) where each Town would have a representative. The DAO will be the governing body, and its members will have the right to vote on the management of the DAO’s treasury, technical upgrades, and protocol roadmap.
When asked why they preferred a DAO, Meek said since he started his software development career in the communication industry, he has always cared about how people interact with each other online. Therefore, he thought giving people control to operate such interactions was a good idea.