coindesk.com
Three months after the successful launch of the Moonbirds non-fungible token (NFT) collection, Kevin Rose is growing his Proof team with the acquisition of Divergence, a London-based engineering firm.
Divergence is known around the industry for its Ethereum smart contract chops, acting behind the scenes of projects like Brotchain, The Kiss Precise and G-Money’s Admit One collection.
As part of the acquisition, Divergence’s co-founder Arran Schlosberg will step into the role of Proof’s VP of engineering. The company’s other co-founder, Angharad Thomas, will become Proof’s director of product, according to a press release.
“If you rewind a couple of months, Kevin was one of our investors,” Thomas told CoinDesk in an interview. “We thought, ‘why are you building over there and we [are] building over here?’ Why don't we do it together and combine the technical R&D lab with Kevin’s incredible product vision and community building.”
Proof is bolstering its staff in preparation for the launch of its “social universe” later this summer, which the company has been teasing since the release of its Proof Collective membership NFT in April. (The cheapest price for one of the NFTs on the open market is currently 83 ETH, or around $93,000).
While full details about the social universe will be revealed at the company’s keynote "Future Proof" conference taking place next month, Rose teased the product as being its own suite of Web3 services for the larger Proof community, not just a 3D metaverse game à la Yuga Labs’ Otherside project.
“The tools we’re all using for curation and communication are not built for Web3. Discord was made for gamers, Reddit is an early Web2 product,” Rose told CoinDesk in an interview. “We’re trying to build something where we can interact with the rich data behind the scenes. The universe and the social tools that we're building will be in a phased approach, where we'll see these very small wins over time add up to a pretty compelling social product.”
Rose’s effort will come with no shortage of capital. The Moonbirds launch and its hefty 2.5 ETH (around $2,800) mint price garnered $200 million in sales in just its opening weekend. The collection currently boasts a 27 ETH (around $31,000) floor price, and continuously sits near the top of weekly collection volume rankings.
Read more: Moonbird NFTs Are a Bet on Kevin Rose's Rep