Kevin Rose’s Web3 startup PROOF Collective acquires NFT engineering team Divergence as the company forges ahead with plans for a new social platform and more.
PROOF Collective, the company behind the Moonbirds NFT collection, became one of Web3’s loudest projects after the NFT project’s sonic rise in April. This time, the Kevin Rose-led Web3 startup forges ahead with plans for a new social platform and several further launches.
To bring its plans to fruition, PROOF Collective has just acquired an amazing development team, Divergence. Divergence is a two-man Web3 engineering team based in London comprised of Arran Schlosberg and Angharad “Harri” Thomas.
Schlosberg and Thomas will join PROOF Collective as part of a unique “acqui-hire” deal. That means Rose’s firm acquired Divergence mainly to recruit the two. With the acquisition, Schlosberg is now Vice President of Engineering, while Thomas serves as Director of Product for the startup. The Divergence team is excited about the acquisition, as both men envision what they can bring to the table.
“My true delight is in making sure things definitely work,” Schlosberg explained. “It sounds boring and like you’re putting the brakes on, but if you want to innovate and try different, difficult things, you really have to make sure that you have that in place. Instead of ‘move fast and break things,’ I like ‘move fast, but you don’t have to break things.’”
On Thomas’ part, he said joining PROOF will allow him and Schlosberg to continue discovering the same ideas they had when they were just a two-man team. This time, they are part of a much bigger team with resources to match the group’s burgeoning ambitions.
Why Rose Chose Divergence
Rose’s PROOF Collective has already worked with Divergence in the past. The company worked on the smart contracts for the PROOF Collective NFT membership pass and the Moonbirds NFT launch on Ethereum.
“I’m just thrilled that they fit perfectly into our organization and really help us in a place where we need the most help right now, which is when we’re going to do very ambitious things that are done on-chain,” Rose said. “There is no better team that I want to bring on and hire to help us accomplish these things.”
Aside from having worked with the company before, Rose is particularly impressed with the Divergence team’s capabilities on both the engineering and product sides. Rose is optimistic that the team will serve a critical role in bringing PROOF’s long-term vision to life.
Some of Divergence’s works that caught Rose’s attention include its Brotchain NFT art project, which produced fully on-chain artwork from an Ethereum smart contract that used Solidity code. According to Thomas, many deemed the project “impossible,” prompting them to take on the challenge and nail it.
The team also worked on The Kiss Precise and PROOF of Art{Work} NFT art projects before working on various features that made NFT drops as seamless as possible. One such feature is allowlist mechanisms that made in-demand NFT drops less chaotic and a smoother on-chain Dutch auction format.
Divergence’s Role in PROOF’s Roadmap
PROOF Collective’s roadmap has a long stretch ahead of it, with further NFT drops, various media initiatives, and an exclusive in-person conference happening in the years to come. With the acquisition of Divergence, PROOF would be able to tick off stops on its roadmap seamlessly.
The company also plans to launch a “social universe” that would somewhat be similar to a Metaverse, except it won’t be a 3D world. According to Rose, this social universe will be more of a “social communications layer around NFTs” or a Web3-centric type of community like Reddit and Discord.
PROOF forecasts it to help serious NFT collectors bond over shared interests and holdings, with each one having the ability to view other users’ NFT collections and different Web3 integrations. Rose is targeting to offer said social platform to PROOF Collective and Moonbirds NFT holders later this summer, although it could eventually be opened to the public, too.
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