Rhinestone

⚡Introducing Rhinestone ⚡ Last year, I left Deliveroo to start a new adventure as an entrepreneur with my co-founder Konrad. Today, Rhinestone is exiting “stealth” (at least on LinkedIn) with the announcement of our $5M seed led by 1kx, with participation from CoinFund, Lattice Fund, Heartcore Capital, Circle Ventures, Alchemy Ventures, and some amazing strategic angels. At Rhinestone, we believe powerful tools for self-sovereign ownership can unlock a new digital era. Our mission is to make the user and developer experience in Web3 as simple as Web2 but 10x more powerful. At face value, this may seem unorthodox for a banker turned Deliveroo market launcher turned product lead for a machine learning product division (especially with all the AI hype). In 2017, I got hooked on crypto. It promised a global decentralised computer that could revolutionise digital economies, cut out the middleman, and push value to the network’s edges—the users, builders, and contributors. But it remained a side quest. However, the deeper I got into building Deliveroo’s core marketplace algorithms, the clearer the need for blockchain technology became. Corporate networks all exhibit the same attract-extract lifecycle. In the early stages, juicy incentives attract network participants to amass scale and market share. However, once scale is achieved, the focus turns to value extraction at the expense of these participants—no matter how you sugarcoat the marketing. And there are far more consequential examples of this—just pick your favourite social platform. Blockchain technology is the answer, but I quickly learned (through many failed side quests) that crypto wasn't ready for prime time. We need a better Web3 UX, enhanced security for users, and a straightforward plug-and-play system for developers. Rhinestone was born out of these lessons. If you’re a Web3 builder looking to offer your users a web2-like experience, read our official fundraising announcement below or get in touch! https://lnkd.in/eCZQEtKy https://lnkd.in/ext8_HFJ