Polygon and Alexis Ohanian’s venture capital firm, Seven Seven Six, unveiled a $200 million initiative on Friday to back projects at the intersection of social media and Web3, also gaming applications developed on Polygon’s network.
Ohanian co-founded Reddit in 2005, resigned in 2010, then returned in 2014 as executive chairman to oversee a recovery before stepping down in 2020.
He was a seed investor in a number of well-known internet and blockchain companies, including Coinbase, Instacart, Sky Mavis (the creator of Axie Infinity), and Patreon.
Polygon’s ecosystem has grown fast this year as an Ethereum scaling solution, with over 3,000 decentralized applications deployed on its network.
Polygon stated earlier this month that it would devote up to 250 million MATIC tokens, worth $627.5 million at the time, to the development of zero-knowledge solutions for complex decentralized finance applications.
For all of this year, the most important drivers of its token price growth have been protocol debuts and cross-chain migrations.
Sandeep Nailwal, a co-founder of Polygon, described social media business models as having a “dramatic impact on our world,” particularly in light of Web 3.0, a broad notion that alludes to the internet’s next generation. “Users generate value, control the network, and reap the rewards,” he stated of Web 3.0.
Ohanian’s involvement with Polygon isn’t his first effort towards Web 3.0 development. In November, the Reddit co-founder teamed up with Solana Ventures to raise $100 million for various Web 3.0 efforts.
