XION, a blockchain built for consumer-centric developers, closed a $25 million Series A funding round earlier this month with investments from Multicoin, Animoca, Arrington Capital, and more.
XION is built by Burnt, a self-proclaimed Web3 foundry that provides a smart contract development toolchain. It is the first platform that allows developers to “build, launch and scale their consumer-facing Web3 products from the ground up,” the company said in a statement.
“Burnt started as a decentralized marketplace for Solana, but XION realized that the marketplace's value acquisition funnel was terrible and onboarding new users was difficult,” said its founder. said the pseudonym “BurntBanksy.” luck. “We built his XION to be able to effectively target mainstream users with the products we want to make, just like one of those do-it-yourself things.”
XION's approach is to rethink the traditional experience of wallets, gas fees, and denominations, and instead opt for multiple abstractions at the protocol level to enable a familiar user experience, the company said. said.
Burnt made headlines in 2021 after it burned an original Banksy painting, worth $95,000 at the time, and streamed it live through its founder's X account. To some it was a publicity stunt, but for Berndt it was part of the process of turning a physical work of art into a non-fungible token.
.@BurntBanksy Burned the Banksy original.
They create NFTs linked to the work and sell it @High seas (of course)
Symbolism:
A new wave of creators who burn idols
Digital and physical valuesSarcasm:
Publicity stunt https://t.co/UCqoh0dBRq pic.twitter.com/AVpBws7LLZ— Camila Russo (@CamiRusso) March 4, 2021
According to Burnt Banksy, the NFT commemorating Banksy's incineration was later sold to an unidentified wallet owner named Galaxy for $400,000.
BurntBanksy is back this month to introduce us to XION, but this time it's about creating the illusion of setting yourself on fire to burn away the negative lessons the ecosystem has witnessed over the past two years. the company said in a statement.
“I'm obsessed with the myth of Prometheus,” he said. The Greek god Prometheus stole fire from the gods and gave it to humanity in the form of technology, knowledge, and ultimately civilization. XION hopes to “ignite the flame of progress,” as Web3 colloquially calls it, he said.
Users may not find civilization on XION, but they can access applications built on XION directly from their phones, eliminating the need for private key management. This means users will be able to sign on to your application using any method recognizable from Web2, such as their email address or facial recognition.
Although XION also has a native token, it is the first blockchain to integrate the stablecoin USDC as the primary currency for transactions, with the aim of providing consumers with predictable prices within the ecosystem.
“I think a big part of the friction, whether it's practical knowledge or technical friction, is that people need to learn what Solana and Ethereum are,” Burntbanksy said. “But people understand the dollar and don't want what they're buying to be worth 220 times more next week,” he says.
The company says the Web3 industry still faces adoption challenges, including complex onboarding, jargon, and transactional friction that deters new users. XION said in a statement that it wants to enable developers to build “compelling consumer applications that are uniquely enabled by blockchain capabilities.”
The company launched a test run that resulted in 100,000 users being registered in 24 hours. In total, more than 150 projects were launched and more than 12 million transactions were made.
“A lot of the projects I saw early on came out of hackathons, came out through the original ecosystem, and happened to be focused on music or games, but most of them fell under the consumer applications umbrella.” he said.
The new funding will allow XION to accelerate the development of its ecosystem, the company said.
