CEO Adi Sideman said the company has raised $7.8 million through initial funding led by Dragonfly Capital for its non-fungible tokens platform, Revel.
Revel is primarily a social game economics-wrapped hybrid of Instagram and Robinhood.
Instagram is a social media platform, while Robinhood is a trading and investment app. According to Sideman, Revel combines the two so that its users can build a “investments of media and of the people they collect.” (In a related announcement earlier this month, Instagram said its creators would soon be able to make their own NFTs and sell them directly to fans outside of the social network.)
Sideman claims that in addition to making their own versions of the media they like and follow, users of Revel’s marketplace can also make NFTs to share with their friends, communities, and followers.
“Followers have a stake in the community they participate in and that is a powerful new experience,” Sideman said. “It’s nuanced, but it’s powerful.”
He explained by saying it’s not all about the money. “I am talking about the emotional stake, the community stake, the status, the new paradigm in which people become partners of other people’s personal brands.”
Social game economics, as described by Sideman, allows the platform to handle economic concepts like supply and demand and inflation with game design and straightforward rules. As he sees it, “healthy inflation levels” are maintained through a combination of supply constraints and asset publication mechanics in the game that form the backbone of Revel’s economy.
As Sideman said, “We call it ‘Proof of Demand Minting,’ whereby anyone can mint their first collection, but only people who get collected can mint more,” Sideman noted. “We gamify it to simplify it and obfuscate economic complexities. The results are that people are trading in a marketplace, contributing to managing efficient economies, by playing a collectibles game.”
Early adopters of the platform include both web3 experts and younger people “who have more time to engage with new platforms and figure out new games,” as stated by Sideman. Sideman claims that popular creators like Cyrus Dobre, who has nearly 10 million TikTok followers and “regularly mints his art” on the marketplace, have also been drawn to the platform.
Several prominent investment firms joined in on this round of funding, including Union Square Ventures, Sfermion, 6th Man Ventures, Gaingels, Wagmi Ventures, Alumni Ventures, Global Impact Ventures, Hansa Labs, and Polygon. The money, according to Sideman, will be used to improve Revel’s social features, as well as its web3 interoperability, generative AI capabilities, and collaborative AI capabilities.
The social media collectibles market is currently weak. According to Sideman, some marketplaces like OpenSea or Magic Eden, and collectible platforms like Sorare and NBA Top Shot, are not very social.
All social media, UGC, and PMM will be ownable and collectible, Sideman said; this is “not yet present, but is inevitable.” Because of this, a new breed of services is born, fusing together features from social media, online shopping, and multiplayer online games.
Revel is a social network and virtual marketplace. It’s meant to be an easy-to-use, game-like trading platform where people can “mine” photos and videos for use as currency. But whether average people and smaller creators will embrace the idea is still up in the air.
“The everyday person won’t want to ‘buy’ your photo, but it’s more nuanced than that,” Sideman said. “The tail of the creator economy keeps getting longer … [and] we’ve created a free economy that we expect most people won’t open their wallets for. They can barter and say, ‘Give me three of these for one of those.’ In many ways, it’s a media game.” Some people can make offers with just assets, or they can offer assets plus money to get a trade, Sideman added.
One newcomer in particular is making a lot of a fuss, but there are other creator-focused projects available now as well. Revel may have hit upon something interesting, a legitimate use case for the blockchain, if the digital collectibles genre can flourish despite a generally lackluster NFT market.
Latest NFT News, Trendings and Tutorials, right at your inbox, every Monday Leave this field empty if you're human: