Web3 startup Comm raises $5 million in offering to compete with Discord

Web3 startup Comm raises $5 million in offering to compete with Discord

Web3 messaging app Comm has raised a $5 million seed round led by CoinFund, funds the startup hopes will allow it to compete with Discord.

The consumer privacy startup is working on scaling end-to-end encryption (E2E), which currently only works for chat apps like Signal or WhatsApp, with the aim of replacing centralized backends.

Ashoat Tevosyan, founder and CEO of Comm, told Blockworks that he wanted to build an app that was “fully sovereign, fully end-to-end encrypted and fully private.”

Other investors in the seed round include Electric Capital, Slow Ventures, LongHash VC, Shima Capital and Eniac Ventures.

Comm is designed so that community members host their own backend servers and only the users themselves can access their data. The key server software is open source and built to be forked (copied and implemented by other projects).

Although encrypted messaging apps can help protect individual data, many of these apps have done so fell into the hands by organized criminals and gangs.

For Tevosyan, regardless of whether Comm exists or not, criminals always find a way to access online networks to continue criminal activity.

“We're building software that puts responsibility on the user, and that could ultimately mean that these situations, these communities can hypothetically use the software,” he said.

Still, he wants Comm to be software that supports larger communities and is skeptical of the idea that a large-scale social platform would attract "shady characters."

Tevosyan added: “It is possible, but my own view on this moral question is that we do not believe that we are providing a service that is good for these people [criminals].”

Comm currently has four full-time employees and approximately 12 part-time employees working on the project. Tevosyan said he plans to continue expanding his team in New York City after the raise, with a handful of employees working remotely.

Still, he said his ultimate vision for the company isn't entirely clear. Users can log into Comm through their crypto wallets, which control their overall identity in the app, although it is not immediately known which blockchains will be supported.

"It's easier to bootstrap when you have a clear view from above. We're not there yet, but we believe in long-term and potential value [of Comm]," he said.

“Our most radical position is that in the future everyone will have a personal private server,” Tevosyan said. “We will have a world where users will ultimately make the decision to build on a platform that gives them the privacy they need to reach the next step in human-computer evolution.”

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The post Web3 Startup Comm raises $5 million in offering to compete with Discord is not financial advice.