This Startup Is Building a Crypto-Friendly LinkedIn; Here’s How

Although the company’s co-founders had a previous NFT investing platform, which shut down a day into its beta launch, today the two are back and hopeful with a new Web3 venture called Meritverse

article-image

Source: blockworks

share

key takeaways

  • “We fundamentally believe that in the distant future, everybody will become a crypto person,” Meritverse co-founder Jacob Claerhout said
  • To make a profile on Meritverse, users must put in their wallet address or ENS to ensure authenticity and proof that they’ve worked on certain projects

Meritverse, advertised as the “professional network of the metaverse,” launched on Thursday, aiming to become a more crypto-friendly LinkedIn, co-founders Jacob Claerhout and Boris Gordts told Blockworks. 

“Basically, the product we’re trying to build is sort of a Google Maps for Web3 that makes it easy to navigate this new era [of the internet],” Gordts said.

To make a profile on Meritverse, users must put in their wallet address or Ethereum name service (ENS) to ensure authenticity and proof that they’ve worked on certain projects. Profiles display a users’ connections, decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) they’ve contributed to and their participation in various crypto communities. 

“[Similar to] LinkedIn, you are able to see where someone has worked before or who they know. People should be able to map out those relationships in order for collaboration [and] hiring to go a lot easier,” Claerhout said. 

However, Meritverse has an edge over LinkedIn because users can ensure their work experience on-chain while centralized networks do not have this capability yet, according to Claerhout. 

“We allow people, in a verifiable way, to showcase who they are as a professional, their talents and their skills,” Claerhout said.  

The platform, which just launched on Product Hunt, comes with rising interest and engagement with DAOs. There are over 180 DAOs with $10.3 billion in assets under management (AUM) and nearly 2 million contributors, according to data from DeepDAO.

DAOs are a new governance structure made possible through the internet and cryptocurrencies. Think of a DAO as an online community with a shared bank account, a group chat and often a mission statement. 

ConstitutionDAO raised $48.9 million from over 17,000 investors, in an effort to buy a copy of the US Constitution from Sotheby’s Auction House in November. Members of the DAO were given governance tokens for contributing to its fund, giving each person a vote on what would happen with the historic document. 

Although the group ultimately lost the bid to hedge fund billionaire Kenneth Griffin, the ConstitutionDAO put the concept of decentralized governance structures briefly in the limelight. 

“Our thesis is basically that these DAO workers or people contributing to DAOs are living the future of work. We believe that if we build a product for them the rest of the world will get in, and will catch up in the next 15 years,” Gordts said. 

‘The highs and lows’

Meritverse’s co-founders previously made headlines after their first startup together shut down less than 24 hours into its beta launch last year. 

Visionrare, self-branded as a “fantasy startup investing game,” allowed users to buy synthetic shares— in NFT form — of startups players believed would be fiscally successful. The project received criticism over whether their core product offering was legal, many questioning if its shares were considered securities. 

Visionrare later said they “underestimated the legal complexities” of the project once they launched, according to a statement by the company. Claerhout said the decision to close Visionrare “wasn’t an easy decision, [but] it was also not a major decision.” 

“We did get it more press attention than maybe we should in the sense that we were a two-month-old project,” he said. “It’s obviously a huge privilege to build in public and to become part of the global discussion.”

“The main thing we learned [from Visionrare] was that we’re a great team. We can build and ship things fast. We move fast and sometimes break things. But we learned that we love working together through the highs and the lows,” Claerhout said.


Get the news in your inbox. Explore Blockworks newsletters:

  • Blockworks Daily: The newsletter that helps thousands of investors understand crypto and the markets, by Byron Gilliam.
  • Empire: Start your morning with the top news and analysis to inform your day in crypto.
  • Forward Guidance: Reporting and analysis on the growing intersection of crypto and macroeconomics, policy and finance.
  • 0xResearch: Alpha directly in your inbox. Market highlights, data, degen trade ideas, governance updates, token performance and more.
  • Lightspeed: Built for Solana investors, developers and community members. The latest from one of crypto’s hottest networks.
  • The Drop: For crypto collectors and traders, covering apps, games, memes and more.
Tags

Upcoming Events

Javits Center North | 445 11th Ave

Tues - Thurs, March 18 - 20, 2025

Blockworks’ Digital Asset Summit (DAS) will feature conversations between the builders, allocators, and legislators who will shape the trajectory of the digital asset ecosystem in the US and abroad.

Industry City | Brooklyn, NY

TUES - THURS, JUNE 24 - 26, 2025

Permissionless IV serves as the definitive gathering for crypto’s technical founders, developers, and builders to come together and create the future.If you’re ready to shape the future of crypto, Permissionless IV is where it happens.

Old Billingsgate

Mon - Wed, October 13 - 15, 2025

Blockworks’ Digital Asset Summit (DAS) will feature conversations between the builders, allocators, and legislators who will shape the trajectory of the digital asset ecosystem in the US and abroad.

recent research

Unlocked by Template (4).png

Research

Wormhole Settlement allows for a highly scalable liquidity venue to fill user intents into a multichain, multi-VM future. By concentrating solvers’ balance sheets on Solana, transaction costs associated with solvers rebalancing inventory across destinations are eliminated. With the ability to settle bridging, swapping, and arbitrary interactions, without the costs and frictions of fragmenting solver liquidity, Wormhole Settlement has the opportunity to settle a large share of volumes in the crosschain interoperability market with a beneficial framework for both users and solvers. 

article-image

Layer-2 Movement finally launched its mainnet yesterday

article-image

A new report from Dragonfly suggests that US users were geoblocked from billions in potential revenue

article-image

“Micro-advancements” take center stage in plans by Anza

article-image

The vote is in addition to the spending stopgap bill, proposed by House Republicans over the weekend

article-image

Strobe will finish deploying its initial $150M by end of year while raising a second fund

article-image

The hearing comes as the industry continues to quarrel over what stablecoin regulation should look like in the US