Reddit Co-Founder, Solana Ventures Launch $100M Initiative for Web 3 Social Media

Major investors see an opportunity to make Solana the social chain.

Announced Tuesday at the Solana conference in Lisbon, Alexis Ohanian’s Seven Seven Six and Solana Ventures are committing $100 million to grow decentralized social media projects on Solana. Originally, the commitment was for $50 million, but at an onstage discussion, Ohanian increased it to $100 million.

A key ingredient: Ohanian’s early work in building Reddit from the ground up.

“With a high performance blockchain like Solana, there is an unprecedented opportunity to fuse social and crypto in a way that feels like a [Web 2] social product but with the added incentive of empowering users with real ownership,” Ohanian said in a statement.

The announcement comes a day after FTX CEO and vocal Solana backer Sam Bankman-Fried signaled his support for social on Solana.

“Social media on the blockchain,” Bankman-Fried said in an interview with this reporter, “I continue to think this could be absolutely huge.”

Decentralized social media platforms exist on a number of other blockchains, including Twetch on BSV and DLive on Tron-owned BitTorrent.

“Web 3 turns users and creators into owners and stakeholders, a change that can’t come soon enough to social media,” Solana Labs COO Raj Gokal said in a statement.

Oddly enough, the announcement comes a day after Gokal was suspended from Twitter. “Twitter suspends accounts which violate the Twitter Rules,” a banner on the blanked-out @rajgokal account read Monday.

Twitter sleuths indicated it could have stemmed from a presumably tongue-in-cheek death threat over the “gm” greeting meme.

UPDATE (Nov. 9, 15:32 UTC): Updated with increase in commitment to $100 million.