Crypto Messaging Platform Lines Raises $4M in Seed Round

Crypto messaging platform Lines has raised $4 million in a seed round, co-founder Shail Handa said.

The funding round was led by former Twitter VP Elad Gil. Other participants included Hash3, Scalar Capital, Volt Capital, Caffeinated Capital, Ethereal Ventures, Mischief, Naval Ravikant, Balaji Srinivasan and Gokul Rajaram.

“There is a rapidly increasing number of people using crypto pseudonyms to purchase digital currency, swap NFTs, vote on proposals, and manage treasuries,” told The Block. “The problem is that whenever someone tries to communicate with another person in this network, there is no way of knowing whether or not they are talking to the right person.”

Handa further added that this is one possible reason for hacks and scams where people lose millions of dollars for among other problems, web3 native identity has no verifiable communications platform.

To solve that problem, Handa said he and his two other co-founders are working to solve the problem by “building an app that lets you send messages from wallet to wallet and join group chats based on the tokens you own,” The Block reported.

“As a user navigates different DAO apps and NFT platforms,” Handa said, “their Lines inbox will follow them around in the browser, enabling them to start conversations with users who hold the same tokens as them or who are members of the same communities.”

Along with Lines, other companies such as Merkle Manufactory also announced last week that it has raised $30 million to develop a social networking protocol called Farcaster.