Sort, the platform simplifying Web3 app development, has raised $3.5 million USD in a seed funding round co-led by Lemniscap and The General Partnership, with participation from Alliance DAO, Punk DAO, Orange DAO, Blizzard Fund, Parasol, Red Rooster Ventures, and a number of angels from Coinbase, Gemini, and Snyk.

The funding will go towards expanding the Sort team, advancing the platform’s product suite, and expediting the launch of ‘Sort applications’, the full-stack for writing a UI for a blockchain contract. Today’s announcement serves as the latest milestone in Sort’s mission to onboard the next million developers to the Web3 ecosystem, by creating a platform easy enough for anyone to use, irrespective of skill level.

As a platform for Web3 UI components, Sort is building a user-centric development platform that allows developers to integrate data from smart contracts directly into their decentralized application with only a few lines of code. Users can start with a contract address and get access to a complete developer toolkit for that contract, or simply cut and paste HTML/Javascript code directly into their front end application to see live blockchain data. All data is served in real-time, including push notifications for any contract event.

Before Web3, data was the product and API keys were used to gate access and create revenue, but in the Web3 era, revenue is generated from contract transactions such as coin swaps or NFT transfers. Sort empowers contract authors to entice builders to use their contracts and drive transaction activity, enabling anyone in the contract author’s community to build applications on the contract for free. Using Sort, users can seamlessly query real-time contract transactions, logs, events, function results, and NFT data. The platform also plans to leverage ChatGPT and LLMs to formulate SQL queries for populating UIs.

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Sort can be used as a complete backend as a service for decentralized applications, with no additional infrastructure needed. Applications can be hosted on decentralized platforms such as IPFS and Arweave, and access read-only disposable API keys, eliminating the need to manage servers or hardware.

Jason Zucchetto, Co-founder of Sort, said: “Closing this seed round signifies a significant seal of approval for our solution suite from a range of global investment heavyweights. We’re energized at the prospect of supercharging decentralized application development, while working closely with developers to extend more cutting-edge tools to the global community. The funding will give us ample financial runway to expand our product portfolio, add firepower to our team and drive mainstream dApp adoption.”

Roderik van der Graaf, Founder of Lemniscap, said: “Historically, writing decentralized applications has been extremely difficult, requiring intricate design skills and advanced technical know-how. Sort is on a mission to greatly simplify the art of Web3 app development, helping new swathes of ecosystem participants to realize their Web3 visions. The Sort founders are major industry advocates for democratizing dApp development – a vision we at Lemniscap wholeheartedly endorse.”

Anthony Kline, Partner at The General Partnership, said: “The world has already benefited heavily from the power and elegance of blockchain, but the quality of developer tooling has not kept pace. We’re proud to be investing in Sort’s seed round – a team at the forefront of developer tooling, Web3 app development, and the needs of the ecosystem. We’re particularly excited by Sort’s growth pipeline, and their potential to onboard the next million developers to the blockchain.”

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