On Thursday, the 5th of May, we hosted our 3rd Monthly Update Live AMA on YouTube (tune in next month if you missed it this time!)

Our goal with these live AMAs is to bring the community together while providing a roadmap of what’s been happening behind the scenes; for everyone to get involved! We also share any upcoming milestones or exciting events that we will be hosting and looking for your participation with.

Let’s jump into it.

Securing $1.5 Million in Seed Funding

We’ve had a hectic Season 1 — but productive, giving us little time to look back and reflect on the many outstanding accomplishments that our team and the entire community made possible. We are incredibly proud of our team’s efforts — and our Stewards (more on that later) — giving their all in helping push our mission forward.

The top noteworthy news is that we officially closed our seed funding round — securing $1.5 million for further project development. This solidifies our transition from an Ocean-grant funded project to becoming a standalone platform — a step towards our long-term vision of becoming a collaborative protocol for all DataUnions to build on top of.

This 1st round of seed funding also creates many strategic alliances for us to leverage to further promote our network while also lending our expertise in the space to emerging DataUnion’s.

Our Seed Round investors include: Outlier Ventures, Protocol Labs, Ocean Protocol Ventures, BMW Capital, Flori Ventures, Trent McConaghy and Bruce Pon (Founders of Ocean Protocol), Oliver Durrer (Co-Founder of SwissLEAP), Laurent Rochat (Founder of Innovation Atelier), Pedro Oliveira (Co-Founder of TalentProtocol), Daniel De Witte (Co-Founder of WorkPi), Max Stealth and other key individuals.

We thank our investors and are excited about what the future has in store for the entire data industry!

Officially Announcing Our Amasa Partnership

This month also marked the beginning of a fruitful partnership with the Amasa team. We are excited to help build the necessary infrastructure to support our shared goal of bringing the value of data back into the hands of the people. You can read more details about the partnership here.

Rid The World of Plastic With Generative Art (Plastiks Collaboration)

We all understand the importance of cleaning up litter after ourselves — the world can do with less plastic. Now let’s take it a step further and turn our act of kindness toward creating unique, generative digital assets!

Plastiks is a marketplace with a mission to revolutionize two multi-billion dollar industries: Recycling and NFTs. Where recyclers, artists, and single-use-packaging companies come together to make the world cleaner.

The Plastik token will unlock features on the platform that bring a new utility to NFTs: Proof of Plastic Recovery. This certificate enables single-use packaging (SUP) companies to demonstrate their environmental commitment. Additionally, the platform will allow recyclers worldwide to take action to clean up the world while earning them revenue in the process.

View our art collection on the Plastiks marketplace here.

Amsterdam Blockchain Week 2022

Our Co-Founder & CCO, Mark Siebert, attended one of the hottest events in the blockchain space — Amsterdam Blockchain Week! He connected with current friends in the ecosystem, such as DataUnion Steward Richard Blythman, co-founder of Algovera, while networking with other emerging entrepreneurs looking to start their own DataUnions!

“I had an incredible time attending the various events throughout the week! It was nice having the community gather together and being able to finally put faces to the many online connections DataUnion Foundation has made over the years. There were a lot of impact initiatives presented; I am looking forward to seeing how this will push our industry forward.” — Mark Siebert, Co-Founder & CCO at DataUnion Foundation.

Our DataUnion Stewards Program

Together, we can do more — that has always been our mentality driving all our business decisions. This is why we decided to spread a new initiative to bring together like-minded individuals with a passion and entrepreneurial drive to move the data ecosystem toward a better future.

This program aims to ignite a fire within people around a common challenge — whether AI or data — by connecting their ideas and facilitating their entry into the Web3 space. Our hope is this will create a chain reaction that will further increase the conversion of Web2 partnerships into the Web3 environment while providing the necessary education to make that transition as seamless as possible.

Come Check Us Out At The Sovereign Nature Event (May 2022)

The last 2 years have been full of digital meetups, conferences and events — enough is enough! Come join us at the upcoming Sovereign Nature Initiative Experimental Event hosted on the 21st of May, 2022!

We will be demonstrating an experimental DataUnion, set up exclusively for the event, where audience participants will be able to use our mobile app to collect real-time data and earn an NFT. This will be your chance to own, potentially, your first NFT without buying it — lending credibility towards our mission of unlocking the value of data back into the hands of everyone.

We look forward to meeting new faces during the event and, as a community, exploring ways that we can all lend Nature its own voice — and sovereignty — in an ever digitizing world.

In Case You Missed the Live Event