Icebreaker—think LinkedIn but on a blockchain—announced on Wednesday it has secured $5 million in seed funding. CoinFund led the raise, with participation from Accomplice, Anagram, and Legion Capital, among others.
The company, which is valued at $21 million, wants to become the world’s first open-source network for professional connections. Its cofounders, Dan Stone and Jack Dillé, hail from Google and Coinbase; Stone was a product manager at the crypto giant and also the cocreator of Google’s largest cross-identity measurement and marketing platform, and Dillé was a design lead for Google Workspace.
The pair founded Icebreaker on the joint belief that the trail of one’s digital identity—and reputation—shouldn’t be owned by a single entity, but rather publicly owned and accessible to all. Frustrated that platforms like LinkedIn restrict how we leverage our own contacts, Dillé told Fortune that he hopes to remove the paywalls and credits, which “require us to pay just to navigate our own network.” Using blockchain technology, Icebreaker allows users to transfer their existing professional profile and network all into one verified channel.
“Imagine if you click the log-in button, and then you see the entirety of your network across LinkedIn, Twitter, Farcaster, and email? Imagine how many intros could be more effectively routed if you could see the full picture of how you are connected with somebody,” Stone told Fortune.
Users can instantly prove their credentials and provide verifiable endorsements for people in their network. The idea is to create an “open graph of reputation and identity,” according to the founders. They hope to challenge LinkedIn’s closed network that “gatekeeps data,” freeing users to seek out candidates and opportunities wherever they may be online. By building on-chain, the founders note, they will create a public ledger of shared context and trust.
“Digital networking is increasingly saturated with AI-driven noise and fake personas,” the founders said in a statement. As an example of this: Dillé’s LinkedIn title reads “CEO of Google”—a small piece of digital performance art to draw attention to non-verifiable information on Web2 social media networks that can leave both job seekers and recruiters vulnerable to false claims.
“Icebreaker was created to empower professionals to seamlessly tap their existing profiles and networks to surface exceptional people and opportunities, using recent advancements in cryptographically verifiable identity,” the company said, adding that the new funding will go to scaling its team and product building.
“One of the next significant use cases for crypto is to develop foundational social graphs for applications to leverage … We are proud to back Dan, Jack, and their team in their mission to introduce true ownership of professional identity to everyone online,” CoinFund CIO Alex Felix said in a statement.
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