Elrond-based “Open Metaverse” Data Platform Itheum Secures $1.5M Seed Round From Morningstar Ventures

Itheum has received a $1.5 million seed investment from Morningstar Ventures, which will also fund additional incubation for the Elrond-based Itheum initiative in order to ensure proper growth from its early stages so that it may realize its full potential.

Itheum is the first initiative to emerge from Morningstar Ventures’ Elrond Dubai Incubator, which opened in October 2021. Morningstar Ventures has invested $15 million in the incubator to attract more developers and ideas to the Elrond ecosystem. Elrond’s state-sharding approach enables transactions to be processed at previously unheard-of speeds, paving the path for more complex goods and services based on blockchain technology and smart contracts.

Itheum sees the UAE market as the first stop on the way to establishing the world’s first decentralized multi-chain data brokerage platform, with exciting and innovative use cases ranging from enterprise-level data sharing to personal data-backed Metaverse identity technology, thanks to the team’s and investors’ strong presence in the region.

Itheum’s founder, Mark Paul, had this to say about the news: “Itheum is a set of technologies that allows high-value data to be bridged from Web2 to Web3 and then sold peer-to-peer without the use of centralized middlemen. Users can take ownership of their data and participate in the Web3 and Metaverse data economies thanks to the deployment of blockchain technology.”

Danilo, the CIO of Morningstar Ventures, the seed round’s lead investor, adds: “We couldn’t be more excited to reveal Itheum to our community after receiving interest from 100s of projects over the last three months since our announcement of our Dubai Elrond Incubator, and deep-diving on a dozen of quality projects. By developing consumer data products in the NFT, Gaming, and Metaverse domains, the Itheum team has made the complicated (and important) technology challenge of decentralized data ownership and trade “sexy and relevant.”

Itheum will continue to expand the infrastructure following the fundraising round in order to become the key data platform for the Web3 ecosystem and the “Open Metaverse.” Users will be able to utilize the Data DEX to conduct peer-to-peer data trade, build their own virtual avatar identity based on their personal data, mint personal datasets as NFTs, interact with other data avatars, conduct cross-metaverse data trade, and align themselves with Data Coalition DAOs.

The Itheum core platform is now available on Ethereum, Polygon, and Binance Smart Chain, with plans to bring their primary core version to Elrond in the near future, opening the way for a multi-chain, data-driven Metaverse.