We are proud to announce our first cohort of teams into our dedicated Filecoin Base Camp, the only accelerator dedicated to the mission of an Open Metaverse.
At Outlier Ventures, we are the early investors in Web3; a digital future centered on user centricity and sovereignty of the individual, their identity, data and wealth. While our investment thesis evolves, we have always remained laser-focused on our mission to counter the capture, control, and increased centralization of wealth and power of Web 2. We understand that Filecoin and IPFS are about more than storage.
These protocols are relevant for permissionless innovation in nearly every use case, from online search to social media. By codifying free market forces into the storage ecosystem, Filecoin and IPFS create the incentives for the commodification of data as an asset at scale and enable its use as collateral in data unions and DeFi.
This led us to condense several years of applied learning at all layers of the open data economy into a 5-month intensive accelerator program that helps early-stage founders navigate the complexities and nuances they encounter while exploring new business models mixed with Web3 technologies. We help them remain focused while finding product-market-fit and effectively capitalise their project through equity, tokens and even NFTs.
Over the coming weeks, we will be leveraging the combined resources of our incredible ecosystem of partners and begin working with them on everything from scaling their teams and business models to pitch, product, customer adoption and token design. This isn’t a cookie-cutter program, but rather a bespoke solution for accelerating billion dollar token networks and the transformational web 3.0 businesses of tomorrow.
Filecoin Base Camp Cohort 1 is just one of three Base Camp program cohorts starting in Fall 2021, handpicked from hundreds of applicants across North America, Europe and Asia, who best represent the Open Metaverse OS thesis and will serve to grow adoption of the Filecoin ecosystem. Each of these projects brings unique contributions to the Filecoin network that goes beyond the decentralized storage use case with powerful innovations in the NFT, open data, music and even drug discovery fields.
We’re looking forward to working closely with these teams over the next few months to fast track their development and help launch them into the Open Metaverse.
Read more about each of the teams below and feel free to follow the progress of Filecoin Base Camp Cohort 1 as we work hand in hand towards building the free Open Metaverse that we collectively want to see.
The content data network that never dies 👉 reader.glitter.link
Problem:
Curating the content you read on the internet is difficult. Data is often impermanent and the average lifespan of a web page is only 100 days. Data is often not owned or controlled by end-users and can be deleted, siloed, or blocked at any time. Large corporations control vast amounts of information, deciding where and how it is generated, restricting the flow of information and how and when it disappears.
Solution:
Glitter is creating a content data network that never dies. Glitter is reimaging what true data ownership means by designing a federated network leveraging RSS and IPFS technologies to provide universal accessibility at scale. The Glitter network is a guardian of internet freedom by giving users full data control and censorship resistance through properly aligned incentives and decentralised RSS services.
Fuel data collaborations for data-centric AI 👉 dataunion.app
Problem:
Data is the new oil, and as individuals on the internet we all produce this valuable data, but seldom receive value from it. Giant corporations have used this to their advantage to harvest data and profit from us but until recently there were few options for ordinary people to profit from the data they create. Organizations were needed to coordinate data buyers and to pool data into usable sets that could be sold for research purposes.
Solution:
DataUnion gives everyone the ability to unlock the power and profit of their data to help build a better future for themselves and others. Participants can use simple apps to earn data tokens becoming shareholders in datasets that are sold on the Ocean Protocol marketplace. They can help train machine learning models, accelerate scientific research and contribute to gain crypto rewards.
Web3 simplified for brands in LATAM 👉 fayre.com
Problem:
The Latin and South American market is underserved in the context of Web3. OpenSea.io and other NFT marketplaces are designed primary around English speaking or Asian markets while largely ignoring the needs of a Hispanic user base. A focused NFT Ecosystem is needed for brands and Spanish speaking creators in Latin America and beyond to onboard these communities at a faster rate.
Solution:
Fayre has designed a custom NFT marketplace solution with an initial 0% transaction fee model component to spark rapid user adoption. This pioneering membership-based ecosystem, when combined with a Web3 Modular Metaverse P2E dapp will enable brand participants to do multichain minting and bridging, lower the technical complexity and barrier of entry for traditional brands, partners, and institutions.
Get rewarded for your banking data 👉 Unbanks.me
Problem:
Banks and financial companies are selling our data, but we get nothing. Just one company, Visa, reported data processing revenues of 3.3 billion dollars in Q3 of 2021. This process should be opt-in, transparent and users should be able to receive rewards for their data.
Solution:
Unbanks is the world’s first consumer banking data union where users are rewarded for their banking data. Unbanks removes all personal data before placing your transactional data into a compliant data union-controlled pool on the marketplace. This allows participants to monetize their data in a safe and controlled manner.
Incentivising the collective curiosity of medical scientists towards patient-centric innovation 👉 Flemingprotocol.io
Problem:
Drug discovery funding allocation is lacking transparency and fairness. Medical innovations such as drug and therapy development are often slow and costly. 90% of research data cannot be replicated, wasting tens of billions annually. Up to 90% of drug development efforts fail at $3 billion dollars per project. While research and development spend is growing across the globe we are not finding solutions fast enough.
Solution:
Fleming is building the Linux of medical discovery through smart contracts. Using crypto funding to facilitate open science collaboration in a DAO based governance structure, Fleming protocol will deliver innovations 90% faster and 100x cheaper than the current medical industry establishment.
Engage fans through innovative technologies at the intersection of art, music and augmented reality 👉 Auras-studios.com
Problem:
How can musicians combine art, music and augmented reality in order to grow their audience and engage their base without a massive staff or programming team?
Solution:
Xone offers a simple web and app metaverse solution which makes owning NFTs easy for regular music fans. Xone combines social tools, a marketplace, and even augmented reality and creator tools that create ongoing connections between artists and fans.
Understanding Information Differently, a community-based truth machine 👉 Exorde.Network
Problem:
Web 2.0 giants like Facebook and Twitter are still failing at eliminating fake news. Information is often tainted by political bias, with little transparency and economic incentive to validate claims.
Solution:
Exorde is a politically neutral and transparent platform powered by a community and aimed at mapping out the Web by offering decentralized data services. Imagine an entire economy created to fight the scourge of fake news and to build a public immutable record of transparent truth.
Blockchain Attached Storage (BAS) connect to FIL network 👉 fx.land
Problem:
All of our data is now stored on centralised servers, Google, Amazon, Dropbox, and it can be turned off, lost, hacked or censored.
Solution:
BOX is a new form factor for personal Web3 powered servers. BOX is a hardware-based home-cloud, decentralized application server that runs distributed applications and mines cryptocurrency when idle to provide the ultimate Web3 experience.
The personalized, Proartist music platform 👉 MeMusic.io
Problem:
Artists receive little compensation for their creative work even while fans actively searching for new ways to engage with them through interactive experiences and NFTs. Many solutions involve making large tradeoffs towards centralization or towards sacrificing usability and user experience.
Solution:
MeMusic implements a hybrid architecture of decentralized storage and blockchain technology. Through blockchain implementation, users can participate in transparent payouts, incentivized activities, and decentralized governance. Decentralized storage is able to reduce operational costs while increasing the security of the platform.
If you are building in Web 3 and might be interested in joining our next cohort you can pre-register your startup here for the next time when applications open.
