a16z crypto – the crypto-focused arm of VC agency Andreesen Horowitz – is main a $50 million funding spherical for the VeeFriends Non-Fungible Token (NFT) Project. The funding will assist VeeFriends broaden its “creative, technical, and experiential operations” to assist the expansion of the Web 3 ecosystem.
Understanding VeeFriends
A16z normal companion Chris Lyons defined the agency’s curiosity in VeeFriends in an announcement thread on Thursday.VeeFriends is an NFT assortment launched by Gary Vaynerchuck – a extremely common social media entrepreneur and CEO of VaynerMedia. He recurrently produces motivational and business-oriented content material for his YouTube viewers.Vaynerchuck has taken a powerful curiosity in internet 3 over the previous 12 months, making a stream of academic content material about blockchain, NFTs, and why they matter. His VeeFriends assortment is supposed to leverage internet 3 through “meaningful intellectual property and an extraordinary community,” the VeeFriends web site
The assortment is comprised of childlike hand-drawn animal cartoons based mostly on “meaningful attributes” like tolerance, persistence, and authenticity. These are traits that Vaynerhcuk continuously advocates for in his common content material.
“VeeFriends NFTs are brought to life through motivational storytelling and creative on-chain character development,” mentioned Lyons.
An NFT is a novel digital blockchain token with none equal. Though NFTs are sometimes marketed in collections of a whole bunch or hundreds at a time, every token usually incorporates attributes that make them barely completely different from all others.
Thus, such tokens can be utilized for creating digital collectibles, or for representing different non-fungible belongings. VeeFriends particularly provides holders numerous utilities, comparable to offering entry to in-person occasions like VeeCon.
Web 3 Over Bitcoin
A standard thread shared between a16z and Vaynerchuck is their relative disinterest in Bitcoin, versus the broader world of blockchain, NFTs, and decentralized apps.
“I kind of dismissed it as because I don’t love finance, I don’t love financial arbitrage. I don’t really understand basic financial concepts,” Vaynerchuck advised Yahoo Finance about Bitcoin in November.
By distinction, the worth of Ethereum was an instantaneous click on for the entrepreneur. “I was aware that something had happened where people collected something digital,” he mentioned.
Unlike Bitcoin, Ethereum permits for the creation of tokens and different monetary belongings on-chain, like NFTs. Bitcoin NFTs solely exist on sidechains.
In an analogous trend, a16z launched a prolonged report in May in regards to the adoption of internet 3 in 2022, which contained no point out of Bitcoin, but frequent point out of Ethereum. Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey has slammed the VC agency for taking this method, preferring to construct atop Bitcoin as an alternative.
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