Author: angelilu, Foresight News
a16z Crypto has launched Crypto Startup School (CSS) again after a lapse of 3 years, and expanded it into a comprehensive accelerator program aimed at cultivating and supporting a new generation of Web3 projects. This is very attractive for startups, as they can not only get financial support, but also guidance from top crypto venture capital firms. CSS, which was first launched in February 2020, has produced excellent Web3 crypto applications such as Phantom, Flashbots, and Goldfinch. Therefore, after the application was opened, more than 8,000 teams from 15 countries and regions applied. The teams have a wide range of products, covering infrastructure, creator tools, and Web3 games.
a16z Crypto selected 26 teams to participate in the Crypto Startup School, which started on March 7 this year, for a period of 3 months, and held a Demo Day on May 25. Participating projects can receive $500,000 in seed funding. With the support and acceleration of CSS, these projects are expected to continue to develop and promote the innovation of Web3 technology. Let's dig for gems together. The following is a brief introduction of the 26 participating projects.
Blockus
Blockus is a service that encapsulates and provides account management and NFT sales pages. Its goal is to provide game studios with seamlessly integrated account and wallet management, NFT markets and staking, fiat and crypto payments, and other functions to help developers focus on innovating gameplay.
Discove
Discove is a decentralized SNS platform that aims to provide users with simple tools to create personal feeds. Through integration with the decentralized social network Farcaster, Discove allows users to easily create and share content sources they care about and build personal interest communities.
Get on
Fuul is a marketing engine focused on Web3 services, designed to help projects find and manage growth partnerships. Using Fuul's smart contracts for trustless and transparent advanced conversion tracking, automatic payments, and more, developers can better measure the effectiveness of their campaigns and optimize growth strategies.
ZeroDev
ZeroDev is an embeddable and programmable smart wallet that supports "account abstraction" and is compatible with ERC-4337's AA wallet core, API, SDK, etc. It includes functions such as sponsoring Gas, batch transactions, and automated transactions for users.
Primev
Primev is a decentralized data protocol designed to provide on-chain data to MEV participants. Through Primev, users can obtain and share information about MEV, promoting the development of the entire MEV ecosystem.
ChainPatrol
ChainPatrol is a Web3 real-time security platform that provides fake website and suspicious address information collection services, collects information from Twitter, Discord, Telegram, Google Ads and other channels, and warns users of phishing risks through reports.
Plurigrid
Plurigrid is committed to building a decentralized energy system, optimized through digital technologies and governed by the principles of sustainability, inclusivity and value creation for all stakeholders. It aims to transform the energy sector and contribute to building a more resilient and sustainable world.
Web3Analytic
Web3Analytic is a tool focused on DeFi product analysis. It helps Web3 product and marketing teams convert, attract and retain more users through code-free user analysis. It also includes functions such as competitive product analysis.
Shield
Shield is a security enhancement tool for Web3 platforms and communities that helps organizations take comprehensive security measures to prevent cryptographic vulnerability exploits. Shield's threat detection software can be directly integrated into any platform via an API, or integrated into Discord as a security robot for online communities. Shield announced the completion of a $2.1 million financing in April this year.
Mentaport
Mentaport is a Web3 geolocation platform that enables the creation of smart contracts that are aware of physical location and update over time.
brakes
Frens is a messaging application for Web3 browsers that aims to provide a better social experience and communication platform.
Handsome
Bello is an NFT project holder analysis tool that helps users understand the relationship between NFT projects and holders, and provides relevant analysis and insights. It is currently in private testing.
Narval
Narval is a customized wallet platform for organizations such as DAOs, Web3 guilds, NFT funds, etc. It protects, manages and uses users' NFTs and digital assets through Web3 native policy controls.
Eth.id
Eth.id is a personal Web 3 Profile website that helps users display personal related link collections and NFTs on Web2 websites by linking "me.eth.id" with Ethereum addresses.
formless
formless is a creative technology lab focused on developing the decentralized media application Share Protocol, a digital content distribution engine that uses peer-to-peer, pay-per-access microtransactions on the blockchain for decentralized distribution.
Capsule
Capsule is a wallet toolkit that implements programmable MPC, designed to help developers create wallets with interoperable transactions, seamlessly connect users to Web3 services, and conduct transactions and signatures. Capsule was founded last year by Nitya Subramanian, former product director of Layer 1 blockchain Celo, and completed a round of financing in March this year, with the amount of financing not disclosed.
IYK
IYK is a project that aims to create a connection between the physical world and the digital world. By linking a shirt with a built-in NFC chip to NFT, users can interact and experience digital assets.
FINE
FINE is a Web3 studio focused on generating art and interoperable assets, bringing unique art experiences and interactivity to users.
Pimlico
Pimlico is a cryptographic infrastructure for account abstraction that provides wallets with its plug-and-play API to sponsor user transactions, increasing the number of users initiating transactions for DApps.
'mbd the world
'mbd the world aims to build a better AI recommendation system and make it accessible to anyone, allowing users to create Web3 search and social feeds. The AI behind mbd is trained with all the data from Web3 open protocols such as Lens, Farcaster, and Mirror.
Sky Lab
Sky Lab aims to provide tools for building autonomously governed on-chain games, design constraint mechanisms, and set up value distribution functions to reward developers for building valuable games and incentivize players to make progress.
Stackr Good
Stackr Labs is building a unique modular Rollup SDK that enables developers to build micro Rollups using general-purpose programming languages. Designed to simplify Rollup development, that is, running the state machine off-chain and publishing the computational data back to L1, developers only need to focus on how to build the state machine, and other parts of the Rollup infrastructure will be handled by the SDK.
KIKI World
KIKI World is building a future customer-owned beauty platform that provides physical beauty products and on-chain products. Users can vote for newly released physical beauty products, including virtual membership passes.
Lockbox
Lockbox is a smart contract-based, self-custodial solution for permissioned and scalable crypto asset management.
Hourglass
Hourglass is a Web3 native browser that integrates a wallet, personalized feeds, and a large language model (LLM), aiming to simplify the currently fragmented Web3 experience.
Gandalf
Gandalf supports creators to set up tokenized gated content, so that only people who meet the access conditions can view the creator's content. It supports content from platforms such as Typeform, Notion, and Substack.