3Box Labs, the developer of Ceramic, a decentralized platform for blockchain application data, today announced it has raised $30 million in a new funding round co-led by Multicoin Capital and Union Square Ventures.
The Series A round was also joined by 50 other investors that include Coinbase Ventures, CoinFund, Collabfund, Dapper Labs, DCG, Edge and Node, Figment, Hashed, Jump Crypto, Metacartel Ventures, Not Boring Capital, Protocol Labs and Variant Fund.
Using Ceramic, developers can decentralize application databases and make data universally composable and reusable across web3 apps. That means data models can be shared endlessly across different apps as long as they’re supported. For example, documents, user data, metadata, tables, video game items or anything that developers may want to share can be exchanged peer-to-peer without the need for a centralized database.
Ceramic’s platform adds extra behaviors to static data files that allow them to be “composed” into higher-order data structures so that they can be distributed across a decentralized network, in this case, a blockchain.
“Blockchains have already demonstrated the value of composability for tokens. Ceramic brings that same composability to every single piece of data on the internet,” said Ceramic co-founder Michael Sena. “Some of the most interesting work happening in the community right now is around creating data models for decentralized social media, crypto gaming and other web3-native applications that require reusable data.”
Web3 refers to the decentralized web, which uses blockchain technology and peer-to-peer networks to allow highly available data sharing directly between participants and applications without the need for middlemen. Developer platforms such as Ceramic provide tools that bring the power of web3 technology to break data out of centralized services and make it decentralized.
That’s important because some web3 dapps still use Web 2.0 services, such as Amazon Web Services, to store information, and that’s anathema to the decentralized nature of web3 applications. Ceramic aims to provide developers the platform and tools they need to break away from that centralization.
Potential use cases for Ceramic include portable self-sovereign identity services, shared data schemas and definitions across application ecosystems, interoperable application storage and open web services without needing new accounts or web logins.
3Box Labs debuted the platform in beta test mode in June. Since then, Ceramic has been put to use by thousands of web3 developers and is now integrated with more than 400 applications. The community has used Ceramic to build a marketplace of data model standards including cross-chain identity, user profiles, social graphs, social networks, skills graphs and reputation systems.
“To date, blockchains have primarily been designed to keep track of state for financial applications predicated on scarcity, not data applications predicated on abundance,” said Kyle Samani, managing partner at Multicoin Capital. “Ceramic purpose-built a decentralized data network from the ground up with the specific goal of making data composable in web3 applications. They’re helping developers realize the long-held vision for web3.”
With this infusion of new capital, 3Box Labs said it intends to forge ahead with the development of Ceramic and support developers by hiring more than 25 new employees. The company currently has positions open in engineering, product, and community roles including leadership opportunities in all of those teams.
