Steven Bartlett has launched a new platform allowing developers to build, launch and manage Web3 projects – without writing a line of code.
The Social Chain founder and now BBC Dragon has launched thirdweb with Furqan Rydhan, founding CTO of Bebo and AppLovin.
Web3 apps include blockchain games, NFT platforms and creator projects. The pair say thirdweb makes launching a Web3 project as simple as opening an eCommerce store on Shopify.
It equips creators, artists, developers, game studios and entrepreneurs with tools to add features to Web3 projects including NFTs, social tokens & currencies, marketplaces for buying and selling tokens, and NFT lootboxes and drops.
More than 1,000 developers are using thirdweb in the early access stages.
With offices in London, New York and San Francisco, thirdweb has just closed a $5 million round of funding from a pool of high-profile business leaders, entrepreneurs and A-List creators.
They include serial entrepreneur and prolific angel investor Gary Vaynerchuk; Ryan Hoover, founder of Product Hunt; Shaan Puri, investor in Deel & Bolt; Imran Khan and Qiao Wang, founders of DeFi Alliance; Soona Amhaz, founder of Volt Capital; Greg Isenberg, co-founder and CEO of Late Checkout and advisor to Reddit; Packy Mccormick, founder of Not Boring; and Christian Angermayer, founder of Atai Life Sciences and Apeiron Investment Group.
“Web3 is not just the future, it’s also the present. We’re currently witnessing one of the greatest technological shifts of our lifetime; it’s happening before our eyes and it’s going to touch every major industry and everyone’s life,” said Bartlett.
“We built thirdweb to allow entrepreneurs, developers, brands and creators to unlock the potential of this third iteration of the internet in the easiest way possible – without having to learn a brand new coding language and without needing to hire a completely new team.
“In the same way that Stripe made payments easy for builders and creators, thirdweb makes Web3 easy, unintimidating and accessible.”
thirdweb supports a multi-chain ecosystem of blockchains, while providing smart contracts, SDKs, widgets and UI components for creating customised Web3 ecosystems.
Adding a feature with thirdweb deploys an on-chain contract on the developers behalf which gives them full control and ownership of their projects.
“It’s inevitable that Web3 will be the foundation for the next wave of the internet, and we’re excited to be providing the tools to build decentralized apps easily,” said Rydhan.
The capital will be used to hire for both the technical and growth teams, with the aim of rapidly scaling the business.
The platform is free to use until royalties and fees are programmed into the sales of NFTs that are launched. thirdweb takes a small percentage (5%) of the royalties of secondary sales, which means the company’s compensation is in direct proportion to the success of its customers.