Sequoia India leads seed round for Band Protocol

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It appears that the content sector in blockchain is healthy and on the rise with Venture capital firm Sequoia India leading a $3 million seed round for a Thai blockchain startup. The company is Band Protocol and it is supposedly based around the maxim of rewarding content producers with token rewards as well as a stake in the operation.

Coindesk reports that, amongst other participants in the seed round were Dunamu and Partners and another early stage investment firm called SeaX. The former is the venture capital arm of the South Korean exchange Upbit.

Band Protocol, which was founded in 2017 aims to offer a platform that creates communities that are token-curated. It also supposedly enables platform monetization as well as governance. This initial investment will supposedly be directed towards product development and marketing.

The company has a clear description of the token on its website which is supposedly used as an economic incentive that harnesses “wisdom of crowd” to help create a useable knowledgebase. This system enables data curators to stake the token which eventually creates an incentive for honesty. Active users and content creators are rewarded for their contribution, retaining the power they are due to as owners of the data, while those who don’t act in good faith get punished. Eventually this will also allow monetization and governance of online communities.

The funding announcement also mentioned a study conducted by IPSOS which revealed that out of a sample survey of 19,000 men and women across 27 countries, no less than half of them had been taken in by fake news of some sort.

Band Protocol co-founder and CEO Soravis Srinawakoon said that such survey results demonstrated the need to combat fake news and other scams on the internet with honest and trustworthy projects.

He added that the startup’s vision is to “bring online, digital communities together by creating a blockchain-enabled platform for transparent and reliable data.”