We’re incredibly excited to announce our $3.5 million funding round led by Distributed Global, an early investor in crypto unicorns Dapper Labs, Audius and Solana. The funding will be used to further develop a new web3-native social media experience, expand the Yup community, and empower curators across the web.

The funding round was also joined by major players in the blockchain and tech space, including Dapper Labs, LD Capital, and various founder angels.

Yup is a social network that rewards and recognizes tastemakers for curating content across web2 and web3 platforms like Twitter, Youtube, Opensea, Mirror, and others. The protocol aims to monetize the value generated by influencers and social media users who surface quality content. Most social media platforms today focus on content creators first, with curators and tastemakers often getting overlooked despite providing massive value to their platforms and following.

“In our view, Web3 social is one of the most exciting categories and we believe Yup is positioning itself to be a leader”, said Johnny Steindorff of Distributed Global.

Since launch, Yup has distributed over $1.6 million in curator rewards. We’ve built a particularly strong relationship with the NFT community, rewarding over $300,000 to NFT curators, with some individuals earning thousands of dollars in YUP.

Web3 offers an opportunity to curate with clear financial incentives and social status. Curation will go beyond blogs and newsletters, where you can tip creators, earn money via curation, and create massive economic graphs. For example, Yup, is a curation protocol that provides an opportunity for users to curate and build their influence accordingly.  - Kinjal, Blockchain Capital

“We’re big believers in bringing blockchain to everyday users,” adds Anuke Ganegoda, Business Lead of Dapper Labs, regarding the raise. “Coupled with the exciting growth of the NFT space, social media and NFT curation might push web3 to the mainstream.”

Strategic Partners

Distributed Global, Dapper Labs, LD Capital, Ambush Capital

Angels

Danny Zuckerman (3box), Patrick Rivera (Mirror), Alex Gausman (NFTX), Bill Block (Miramax), Scott Moore (Gitcoin), Joe Lallouz (Bison Trails), Nader Al-Naji (Bitclout), Stefen Delev (Caribbean Blockchain Alliance), David Phelps, Tomer Ben-David (Bunches), Scott (Genie), Carlos Diaz-Padron and Gail Wilson (Metaphor), and more.

“Traditional social networks thrive on privileged and minimally accessible user data silos. Their business models depend on them. Yup, as a fully open and composable Web3 social network has the opportunity to empower builders and visionaries of the next great social applications,” says Alex Price, who pre-seeded Yup and is currently a Special Advisor at A16z Crypto. “I’m excited to see what kind of feeds, interfaces and more are built on top of Yup’s fully open social graph.”

Yup and its Protocol

Yup is a social network for curators that rewards users for liking and sharing content across the web. The Yup Protocol provides new opportunities for curators to get paid for sourcing quality content, while rewarding creators for producing it.

Curation has its own roles in social media and curators represent a large and powerful demographic. Web3 protocols provide curators with new opportunities to monetize and provide creators with opportunities to form their communities around curation. Platforms also benefit from leveraging web3 curation and moderation protocols for their content feed.

Join Us

We’re incredibly excited to start this next chapter for Yup, and to continue working to build the infrastructure and insight needed for curators and communities to thrive. But we need help, and our hope in publishing this is to encourage more great people to join in the process.

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