USV, Multicoin Lead $30M Raise for 3Box’s Ceramic Data Network

3Box Labs raised $30 million in its effort to build out soon-to-launch data composability network, Ceramic.

Multicoin Capital and Union Square Ventures (USV) led the 3Box equity investment. Coinbase Ventures, Metacartel, Reciprocal, CoinDesk parent Digital Currency Group and many more were also among the backers.

The Web 3 product studio created Ceramic and plans to remain a key contributor to the data-minded layer 1 network after its upcoming mainnet launch, Mike Sena, co-founder of 3Box Labs, told CoinDesk. The network has been in beta since June. Sena has been working on its key idea – making data more open and accessible – since 2015. The firm spun out of Ethereum venture studio ConsenSys in June 2019.

With its biggest test yet approaching, 3Box will use the Series A funding to almost double its staff with new slots for product, engineering and community positions influential for making today’s form of Web 3 startups a success.

Sena said Ceramic has three core components: a scalable infrastructure layer for data, a clearinghouse for sharing data models between network participants and an API suite that any project can use to plug in. The idea is to make all this data more composable and accessible on a decentralized internet.

“Web 3 social” has been an early focus among teams building on the network, he said in an interview.

Beta developers have started compiling what is perhaps an early glimpse of the apps to premiere on mainnet. Estimated in the “thousands,” they’ve built basic components of decentralized social media platforms, including social graphs and reputation systems.

“Blockchains have already demonstrated the value of composability for tokens. Ceramic brings that same composability to every single piece of data on the internet,” Sena said in a statement.

Ceramic may well have its own token one day. But devs haven’t committed to that plan just yet, other than to say they’re thinking about it. If it were to launch, it would have a similar role that ether does on Ethereum, as a “gas” token that unlocks network functionality and incentivizes development.