Mediachain Labs, a blockchain-based online media platform, receives $1.5 million in seed funding

Baozou Comment : The ledger technology of blockchain has been used by many companies to record and track various ownership, including artworks, real estate, jewelry, etc. Recently, another blockchain startup Mediachain Labs has begun to attract people's attention with its open source platform for tracking media ownership using blockchain. It received support from many companies such as Union Square Ventures and Andreessen Horowitz in the company's seed round of financing, raising a total of US$1.5 million. The project is currently in the alpha version development stage and is open to all users. Getty Images, The Museum of Modern Art and Europeana have contributed a total of 2 million digital images to the platform.

Translation: Annie_Xu

Mediachain Labs, an open-source platform for tracking media ownership using blockchain, recently raised $1.5 million in seed funding from New York venture capital firms Union Square Ventures and Andreessen Horowitz, two of the largest venture capital firms in the blockchain and digital currency space.

Other companies participating in this round of financing include RRE Ventures, Alexis Ohanian, William Mougayar, Digital Currency Group, etc., which are not listed here one by one.

Founded in 2016 by Jesse Walden and Denis Nazarov, Mediachain is the first decentralized digital media library that connects media files to their authors.

Denis Nazarov

Nazarov once introduced Mediachain to the media:

"The Mediachain we founded is not a property registry, but more of a knowledge base that preserves the provenance and information of the creators of the work."

Mediachain is an open network, so there are no barriers to entry. The platform records media files and provenance information into Bitcoin's metadata layer, so it is decentralized. The Mediachain blog post said:

"We founded Mediachain with the goal of managing media file creators and making it easier for readers to interact with them."

Mediachain currently estimates that it has received 2 million digital images from sources including Getty Images, The Museum of Modern Art and Europeana.

Steve Heck

Getty Images Chief Technology Officer Steve Heck said:

As the company continues to look for new distribution channels, “we are eager to explore using Mediachain blockchain technology to automatically manage image provenance for the benefit of our photographers and partners.”

The new funding will allow the seven-person Mediachain Labs team to continue developing the platform and building additional services that will appeal to a broad audience. “More importantly, we really want to build a community around this project,” Walden said.

Blockchain technology is now disrupting more and more industries, and Andrew Weissman of Union Square Ventures said that this wave has also spread to the field of online media.

“As a platform for open, decentralized data, Mediachain enables permissionless innovation and can disrupt existing power structures in media distribution.”

Currently, the Mediachain development team is preparing for the release of the alpha version of the platform.