Filecoin Launchpad Accelerator II powered by Tachyon: Call for Startups
We’ve announced that applications are open for the Filecoin Launchpad Accelerator II. If you’re building the distributed web, you can apply by midnight EST on May 9th, 2021.
Over the last two weeks, we‘ve met with over 135 builders in the ecosystem, from the Tachyon and Protocol Labs mentor network, Chainlink Virtual Hackathon participants, the Gitcoin KERNEL community, the Scaling Ethereum and NFT Hack participants, to builders reaching out to us on Twitter.
Here’s where we’re seeing ambitious founders catalyzing ecosystem development across the IPFS, Filecoin, and Ethereum stack, and some examples of the types of companies we think would be really interesting to see.
The New Creator Economy
Gen1 of this NFT boom is exciting to see. But as new and novel use cases emerge, we’re seeing early signs of startups using the unique and uncompetitive advantage of programmability, matched w/ non-fungible tokens to create new and novel use cases for creators, their audiences, and the new economy. Many of these startups are being built, and we are taking note of the cluster of projects building at the intersection of the creator economy and the Future of Work.
Creatives, content creators, and artists are experimenting with ways to monetize their audience. As NFTs will be utilized as access tokens that unlock social engagement, this trend will continue to expand the talent pool of more creators who can sustain their livelihood through their fanbase.
In addition, we’re excited to see projects that are building protocols, tools, and endpoints that enable faster adoption of Social Money that unlocks new forms of interaction between creators, communities, and audiences and redefining how, what, and who we work with for our livelihood.
And we’re seeing new and novel business models utilizing economic theories like Harberger tax that marry public goods with Capitalism 3.0.
We’re excited about startups that are empowering The New Creator Economy and are looking forward to having them interact closely with Tachyon mentors Jesse Walden and Jake Brukhman, who have done a ton of thinking around these domains.
Crypto-Powered Gaming & the Expansion of the Metaverse
As economies open back up post-pandemic, we’ll see that many of the remote-first work environments will persist. As such, the need for collaborative 3rd spaces (i.e., Work, Home, and X) will continue to expand. We anticipate that this trend will extend into the metaverse, as virtual spaces will augment the 3rd spaces IRL, powered by community-owned DAOs with the ability to stream micro-value built atop decentralized video protocols and crypto financial rails.
We’re seeing the early threads of this permissionless and co-op-owned metaverse emerge from applicants and are looking for teams that are accelerating the path of social gaming and expanding the permissionless metaverse further.
We’re very bullish on this space, having been early backers of companies like Underscored Labs, Huddle01, Ether.Cards and others.
Bridging the Privacy Layer of DeFi
As Ethereum 2.0 evolves from Proof of Work (PoW) to Proof of Stake (PoS), it unlocks a significantly higher throughput rate for transactions per second executed on the blockchain, decreasing the gas cost per data transfer tremendously lower. Asynchronous verifiability via zk-SNARKS will quicken the pace of evolution for the DeFi ecosystem and unlock new operating models and business verticals that previously did not exist. We are looking forward to working with teams to leverage the new FinTech rails to enable a more equitable and interoperable global financial system. We are only at the precipice of what smart contracts, oracles, and DAOs can do for our world, and bridging the privacy layer onto the DeFi stack is a key component of what we think of as Fintech 2.0.
Building The New Data Economy
University researchers sit atop petabytes of data, and yet collaboration across research institutions are seldom due to antiquated policies and elitist mindsets. What’s worse, much of the valuable raw material of machine learning algos sits inside the large silos of the tech giants.
Community-owned crypto networks are key components in decentralizing data collection, synthesis, and knowledge sharing and shifting these valuable raw materials closer to the edges of shared ownership marketplaces to benefit while allowing civilization to share in the value collectively created.
We are eager to hear from teams that understand this challenge but are building protocols that unlock new methods of interacting with (and ultimately monetizing) research data for the common good, where new ML and AI algorithms sit atop crypto incentive networks generate massive pools of value creation on machine-to-machine protocol communications.
DataDAOs are the next evolution of decentralized data marketplaces and creates the infrastructure for pooling data together, co-owning, and monetizing it.
Spring 2021 Tachyon Cohort: Filecoin Launchpad Accelerator II
We’re very excited based on the applications we’ve seen. This is our 5th cohort since 2017 and 2nd in partnership with Protocol Labs.
20 teams will be selected for our Spring 2021 cohort. This is a 100% remote program. Teams will receive $80K in seed capital, one-on-one mentorship with a vast global network of web builders, entrepreneurs, and investors, weekly programming to help your startup move rapidly through the product maze on your path to becoming a high-growth venture-backable business. The program culminates in September with a demo day.
We’re looking for teams specifically focused on building developer tools, file management systems, core end-user infrastructure, basic applications, and novel Web3 interactions. So if you’re a startup building core infra and dev tooling, if your startup is creating novel and native web3 applications, or if you’re helping to expand the web3 user base, we’d love to meet you.
Applications are now open. To find out more, see the list of mentors and advisors, apply or book 15 mins office hours with the tachyon staff, go to mesh.xyz/tachyon. Applications close at midnight EST on May 9th.
