Sequoia India Leads $3 Million Round for Token Startup Tackling ‘Fake News’

Capital raising firm Sequoia India \leads a $3 million seed starting round for blockchain start-up Band Protocol, which incentivizes reliable content producers with token rewards and staking.

Announcing the news on Tuesday, the Thailand-based start-up declared that other participating traders in the round included Dunamu & Partners (the venture arm of the operator of South Korean language crypto exchange Upbit) and early-stage investment firm SeaX. A Sequoia India prolocutor showed CoinDesk that it had led the money.

Founded in 2017, Music group Protocol provides a platform that allows users to produce token-curated communities, enabling, it says, platform monetization and governance. The seed investment will go towards speeding up application, as well as helping establish the business's market strategy.

According to its website, the "band" token can be used as an as economical incentive, taking the "wisdom of crowd" to develop a reliable knowledge base for a community. Data curators must share the token, which incentivizes honesty, the startup says, while "bad actors are punished. "

"Active users and content creators are rightfully rewarded for his or her contributions and retain the electricity they deserve as data owner. This allows potential monetization and governance of social networks, " the company explained.

The announcement cites a 2018 Ipsos analysis of 19, 000 men and women across twenty seven countries suggesting that almost 50 per cent of the people polled were had been consumed in by fake news testimonies and only found away later.

Band Protocol co-founder and CEO Soravis Srinawakoon said:

"As blockchain designers and technology enthusiasts, we have noticed an increasing unavailability of trustable data on the internet, along with the rising trend of imitation news. "

The startup's vision is to "bring online, digital communities jointly by creating a blockchain-enabled platform for transparent and reliable data, " this individual explained.

The product also has "clear applications" for credit bureaus and fraudulence detection, compliance and identification verification firms, as well as sites offering online forums, based on the firm.

To be able to increase user adoption, Band Process said it is also exploring multiple scaling alternatives on ethereum, as well as Tendermint, a blockchain consensus project.