Web3 Social Wallet Tribes Launches With $3.3M in Funding

Tribes, a new Web3-native messaging and group wallet app, has raised $3.3 million in a pre-seed funding round led by Kindred Ventures, South Park Commons and Script Capital.

The fundraising closed in October, Tribes founder and CEO Hish Bouabdallah told CoinDesk during an interview last week, putting the round deep into a crypto bear market that put pressure on the investment landscape but ahead of the industry-shaking implosion of centralized exchange FTX. The strengthening of Web3 infrastructure to attract more Web2 natives and general users has emerged as a trend in the post-FTX investment environment.

“Web3 primitives for co-ownership and collective action are transformative, but few people can make sense of the existing products and processes required,” Bouabdallah said in a statement provided to CoinDesk. “In order to realize the full promise of Web3, nailing collective action is absolutely essential. Our approach to embed it directly into group chat makes these powerful and newly possible Web3 actions understandable and accessible to the masses.”

Tribes group wallets let people co-own and manage digital assets while communicating directly through the wallet rather than through an outside messaging service such as Discord or Twitter. The use cases include decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) – token-gated communities built around as shared mission – or something as simple as family members wanting to co-contribute to the joint ownership of property. Wallets can send, receive and hold digital assets, including non-fungible tokens (NFTs), memberships and currencies. Sending or spending assets from the group requires a group vote for approval.

Available in the Apple (AAPL) and Google app stores, Tribes app users connect through their Coinbase Wallet. Bouabdallah was previously an engineer at Coinbase (COIN) who worked on developing the exchange’s wallet product.

Read more: Your First Crypto Wallet: What Is a Crypto Wallet and How to Use It