Degen (DEGEN), the community-created token of Farcaster, experienced a 17% surge in value following the announcement that the blockchain-based social platform had successfully raised $150 million in its latest funding round. The Series A round was led by venture firm Paradigm, with participation from Andreessen Horowitz, Haun, USV, Variant, and Standard Crypto. Farcaster founder Dan Romero expressed his gratitude for the funding, stating that it would provide long-term support for the development of Farcaster. Romero, a former executive at Coinbase, had hinted at the funding round back in March. Bloomberg had previously reported that the funding round would increase the valuation of Merkle Manufactory, the company behind Farcaster, to $1 billion.
Jesse Walden, the co-founder and general partner of Variant Fund, praised Farcaster as a rapidly growing protocol. Romero also highlighted the importance of the funding in attracting more users to the platform. He revealed that since October, Farcaster had gained 350,000 paid sign-ups and experienced a 50-fold increase in network activity. Going forward, the platform will focus on increasing daily active users and implementing new features such as channels and direct messaging.
DEGEN, which is not an official token of the Farcaster protocol but instead a community-created token, saw a significant price surge of 17% in response to the funding news. Currently, it is trading at $0.023, according to CoinMarketCap. DEGEN was originally launched by Jacek Trociński in January as a community memecoin, which was distributed to users as a reward for their engagement with posts and creation of high-quality content. Since then, DEGEN has gained popularity and Trociński has even launched the DEGEN chain, a meme coin-focused layer-3 blockchain on Base, with DEGEN serving as the native gas token.
In conclusion, the successful funding round for Farcaster and the increased value of DEGEN highlight the growing success and potential of the blockchain-based social platform.