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Why did a16Z and other top VCS like him pay attention to the 29-year-old entrepreneur behind Basis and BitClout?

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29 years old, three times entrepreneurship, top VC plus

Title: "Why did A16Z and other top VCS pay attention to the 29-year-old entrepreneur behind Basis, BitClout?"

原文作者：DADA，深链财经

On September 21, DeSo, a decentralized social blockchain platform, announced that it has raised $200 million from top VCS including A16Z, Sequoia Capital, Coinbase Ventures, and Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian.

It's not uncommon for projects to get top institutional funding, but what's interesting about this funding is that the project's founder, Nader al-Naji, is also the anonymous founder of decentralized social network BitClout.

This information has been disclosed before, but This time Nader al-Naji himself came out and publicly admitted the fact.

Nader al-Naji is 29 years old, but he's already built Basis, BitClout and now DeSo has capital on his side.

What's the story behind his startup?

1. My first startup, from quantitative analyst to Basis

Founder Nader al-Naji graduated from the prestigious Princeton University, completing a degree in computer science and applied mathematics between 2010 and 2013. In The first year after graduation, I joined The D. E. Shaw Group, a financial firm in New York, as an engineer/quantitative analyst in The equity high-frequency trading team.

Nader joined Google the following year, in 2014, working in search engine development and advertising. Nader al-Naji's three years of experience working for a large Internet company has given him the ability to develop and complete projects and to meet many outstanding partners, investors and institutions.

So in 2017, we saw Google Ventures in Nader al-Naji's first ambitious project, the algorithm Basis stable currency.

Out of his love for Bitcoin and his research into the blockchain industry, Nader al-Naji wants to launch Basis, which aims to create a digital token backed by an "algorithmic central bank", as distinct from the most widely used, Claiming the low level of transparency that comes with backing each stable cryptocurrency Tether with a dollar of hard currency reserves, Basis tokens would simulate inflation and deflationary algorithms to control prices, just like real money.

In an interview with Reuters in October of that year, Nader al-Naji revealed his vision for a stable cryptocurrency, in which Basis would develop three currency systems to make it scalable and constructive.

Silicon Valley VCS were impressed by financial innovations that did not rely on centralized entities to hold traditional capital backing. In 2018, Nader al-Naji, 26, leads a team of 14 from Bain Capital Ventures, Google Ventures, Andreessen Horowitz, Lightspeed, Stan Druckenmiller, Kevin Warsh, Foundation and Google Ventures Wing and other top investors raised more than $133 million.

However, after Basis had been up and running for some time and an in-depth analysis of the regulatory environment, particularly considering the tightening of securities regulations surrounding cryptocurrencies, Nader al-Naji and his team decided in December 2018 to close down and return capital to investors.

But Basis's vision for algorithmic stablecoins didn't stop with the project's closure. In 2020, the Anonymous team announced the restart of the Basis project, which became known as Basis Cash.

Basis Cash has taken on the mantle of Basis, so to speak.

2. "BitClout

More than two years later, Nader al-naji is launching his second venture, using the pseudonym "Diamondhands" to launch BitClout, a new social network whose value depends on a user's popularity and is affectionately known in the country as "people's currency."

BitClout has created quite a stir with that clout. At launch, BitClout has automatically signed up 15,000 of Twitter's most influential users and claims they can claim their BitClout accounts with a tweet at any time.

But BitClout has drawn criticism for putting twitter users' profiles on his platform without their permission, with some calling it a scam.

However, soon BitClout announced that Sequoia Capital, A16z, And Coinbase Ventures were the top names on the list.

But even with the endorsement of a top VC, it's still hard to quell the skepticism of the cryptocurrency community. And while it was an anonymous startup at the time, Nadar al-Naji, the founder of the Basis algorithm, was already being tipped as the mastermind of BitClout.

Brandon Curtis, head of product at decentralized trading platform Radar Relay, issued a legal warning through law firm Anderson Kill to Nadar al-Naji for using his image without consent.

Although Nadar al-Naji and BitClout have some clout raising money, it's probably Basis and his copy that gives investors a glimpse of this young man's creativity. After all, a vote is a vote.

All in all, BitClout has gone from buzz to cool amid criticism from naysayers and excitement from active participants.

3. The third venture, DeSo endorsed by the top VC Group

Yesterday, 29-year-old Nader al-Naji was once again on the crypto circuit with a VC Day-endorsed DeSo. DeSo's contours became clearer as Diamondhands publicly revealed its identity.

With blockchain becoming more widely used, The creation of Web 3, and the innovation of NFT digital ownership, Nader al-Naji and the countless venture capitalists behind DeSo are willing to imagine the future of social media.

The future of social media is taking everything and opening it up so that anyone can build on it, just like a utility. Instead of today's situation, this is a walled garden privately controlled by several companies. Its value is huge because when data and content are open, anyone in the world can build their own content empire and manage it themselves. Now social media like Facebook and Instagram would never allow users to do that. They will never allow anyone else to access their data.

Nader al-Naji believes that decentralized socializing will in the future harness the ingenuity of the entire world, rather than acting as a centralized team. "We want users to own their data, and we want users to own the money they make from that data. With DeSo, we can make social network data available to anyone." Nader al-Naji said in an interview.

Nader al-Naji, meanwhile, said in an interview that he had done so anonymously because he believed it would motivate the community to decentralize the ecosystem more quickly, and that the more people could not rely on centralized entities to dictate terms, the more they would be able to improve and build upon the ecosystem.

So far, more than 100 developers have started building applications on the DeSo blockchain, confirming Nader al-Naji's vision.

And now Nader al-Naji thinks it's time to step up and let people know about DeSo, about himself, and have a real public voice and channel to tell DeSo's story officially.

DeSo already hosts more than 100 other applications as part of a plan to challenge Facebook and other centralized social networks. DeSo serves as blockchain infrastructure to support the functions of traditional social media platforms, such as creating personal information and Posting information, as well as blockchain native functions such as social tokens, tipping or NFT.

So far, one of Nader al-Naji's first two experimental and controversial projects has been shut down, and the other is in a cooling period trying to adjust its strategy to return to the public eye. It remains to be seen how DeSo will evolve in the future. But Nader al-Naji, with its ability to "raise money" from its backers, may have an easier time than other projects.