Justin Kan, who cofounded Twitch, is starting a startup in the web3 world. Kan and his four cofounders have raised $14 million for Rye, a shopping platform that will use crypto tokens to try to build cheaper next generation ecommerce tooling. Their API (Application Programming Interface) makes it easy and cheap for merchants, stores, and customers to do business. Rye wants the API to be fully decentralized on the Solana blockchain in the long run.
For the startup, Justin will be in charge of sales. Venture capitalists, led by a16z crypto, are giving the company $14 million to get started. Solana Ventures, GOAT Capital, L. Catterton, Electric Ant, Electric Feel Ventures, Andre Iguodala, Javale McGee, and James Beshara were among the other investors in this round. They plan to invest the money in the product and engineering teams to build more tools for sellers and merchants and to start making their infrastructure less centralized.
Rye was started by a group of experienced entrepreneurs, including Justin Kan, who co-founded Twitch, Tikhon Bernstam, who sold two companies (Scribd and Parse) for a profit, Robin Chan, an early Zynga employee and founder of Operator, and Saurabh Sharma (CTO) and Jamie Quint, who worked together at Reddit.
There are three main things about the Rye Ecommerce API:
1. Programmatic Checkout is a one-click checkout that lets shoppers add their payment information right on the shopping experience instead of having to pay on a merchant’s website.
2. Shopify & Amazon Product Data: A big list of product data from Shopify and Amazon. Developers can get an API key and look through the catalog for free, asking for information like price, inventory counts, product variants, and more. Rye also has a search and recommendation engine that makes finding products much easier and more personalized.
3.Network Rewards: Links to affiliate networks that let developers and publishers get rewards for their sales.
The future?
Build a unified checkout system so that customers can pay for items from different stores in one cart.
Then add the web3 parts that will eventually be at the center of the network, like email-based wallet creation for shoppers, developers, and merchants. This will unlock things like USDC cash-back rewards, NFT drops and coupons, and faster shopping reward systems.
Lastly, let merchants connect directly to the Rye API. This will let them get faster product information and a faster checkout process.
“Eventually, the Rye API will be fully decentralized, built on the Solana blockchain. To achieve this, we need to work with merchants and sellers directly and partner with developers in the community who understand our vision and want to build with us.”
Arjun Bhargava, CEO and co-founder of Rye writes in a blog post.
