Decentralized knowledge protocol Golden reportedly reeled in $40 million via a funding round led by venture firm Andreessen Horowitz, also known as a16z. 

Specifically, the fundraising witnessed participation from different entities also, nominally Protocol Labs, OpenSea Ventures and the founders of Solana, Dropbox, Postmates and Twitch, among others. 

Apart from spearheading the Series B funding round, Andreessen Horowitz’s general partner Ali Yahya will reportedly also become a member of Golden’s board, together with a16z co-founder Marc Andreessen. 

The freshly received funding will reportedly offer Golden extra resources to carry on with the development of its protocol, which is built with a goal of setting standards for the discovery and verification of knowledge in the era of Web3.

Particularly, Golden is in the design process of a decentralized interface that incentivizes collecting and verifying canonical data. The firm claims that more than 35,000 users took part in in early testnet phases of the protocol.

While venture financing for the crypto sphere has undergone a decline recently, 2022 has witnessed record inflows for blockchain-centric startups. Recently, hedge fund Pantera Capital upped the ante by disclosing plans to raise $1.25 billion for its second blockchain fund. 

Initiatives revolving primarily around Web3, which refers to a future iteration of the internet, have reeled in outsized interest from the venture capital community.

In describing its product, Golden reportedly claimed that incorporating Web3 technologies is “well suited to solve the core problems” of incentivization. Golden has plans down its pipeline to use native tokens for rewarding “good actors”, but at the same time specified that the final product is “not simply ‘Web3 Wikipedia.’” 

The mainnet is scheduled for release in the second quarter of 2023.