Web3 Messenger Tribes Raises $3.3 Million and Launches Social Wallets, Allowing People to Co-Own and Manage Digital Assets

Tribes’ new offering combines social wallet and group chat to unlock power of co-ownership and collective action within Web3 environment

Tribes, the Web3-native messaging app from DMs to DAOs, announced it has raised $3.3 million in pre-seed funding led by Kindred Ventures, South Park Commons and Script Capital. Tribes also announced the launch of its social wallets — the first combined messaging and wallet offering that is foundational to unlocking the power of co-ownership and collective action. The group wallet enables people to co-own and manage digital assets, as well as communicating directly with other co-owners.

In today’s Web3 environment, the communications tools (e.g. Discord, Telegram) available are too separate from the decision making process around digital assets, which often makes it too hard for others to track what’s happening, thoughtfully participate, or even get involved in the first place.

Web3-native identity and infrastructure enables group chats (and token-gated groups) to go beyond talk — getting actual things done! However this only works when there is great communication. Tribes believes that co-ownership and collective action, made practical through Web3 technology, will change the economy and world for the better. This will happen in a variety of ways, including:

1. Friends and family co-funding and sharing big purchases like cars and homes
2. Groups co-investing in digital wares and financial products
3. Collectors and communities with a stake in creators’ successes
4. Fully-operational DAOs with shareholders and operators
5. Government and civic engagement

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In order for ubiquitous co-ownership to come to life, communication (social) and ownership (wallets) must be deeply integrated. Tribes’ app gives all group chats access to a shared wallet — any participant can activate it with one touch. This shared wallet can send, receive and hold digital assets like NFTs, memberships, currencies, and more. Sending or “spending” group assets requires approval from the group — a threshold that groups determine themselves, like 3 of 5 members, for example. Group members can thumbs-up (or -down) directly in the groupchat to approve or reject transactions.

“Web3 primitives for co-ownership and collective action are transformative but few people can make sense of the existing products and processes required,” said Hish Bouabdallah, founder and CEO of Tribes. “In order to realize the full promise of Web3, nailing collective action is absolutely essential. Our approach to embed it directly into group chat makes these powerful and newly-possible Web3 actions understandable and accessible to the masses.”

Today’s social wallet enables “simple” experiences like:

1. Buy things you like together (i.e. buy an NFT as a group chat)
2. Save money as a group (casual investment club)
3. Manage a small organization (i.e. a soccer team or interest group) with collective decision-making and transparent treasury

And looking forward, each of these “simple” use cases is a building block towards on-the-horizon needs for DAOs, distributed app user groups, NFT communities, pop-up crowdfunds and other groups.

The Tribes social wallet combines best-in-class technologies including (Gnosis) Safe multisignature smart contracts, transaction signing with Coinbase Wallet or secure in-app signatures, and Web3 identity support (ENS, Lens, etc.) for co-owner collaboration.

The Tribes team is composed of people with years of experience building and shipping social and crypto products at scale. Bouabdallah was previously a staff software engineer at Coinbase Wallet where he was instrumental in building the flagship Web3 product. Product designer Andrew Courter previously founded a startup that was acquired by Twitter in 2019.

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