Paradigm leads $7.1 million seed round for attention market Noise ahead of Base mainnet launch

Prominent crypto venture capital firm Paradigm is leading a $7.1 million seed investment into Noise, a NYC-based startup building a predictions market-adjacent information platform.

The seed capital builds on a previously unannounced pre-seed funding from Figment Capital and Anagram, as well as strategic investments from GSR, JPEG Trading, and KaitoAI, Gabriel Perez Carafa, CEO and co-founder of Noise, told The Block.

Noise is offering a complement and alternative to prediction markets by allowing traders to place bets on what topics will retain relevance online over time. These so-called “attention markets” combine elements of Google Trends and existing predictions markets to gauge which “brands, trends, and narratives” have continuing cultural cache, according to Carafa.

In other words, Noise provides a filter for the noise.

The platform is launching as prediction markets like Polymarket grow from a niche academic interest to mainstream adoption. In theory, both attention and prediction markets leverage the “wisdom of the crowd” to determine future outcomes. By requiring users to have skin in the game by wagering capital on their predictions, these platforms, theoretically, eliminate personal and media biases.

Launched in beta last May, the invite-only Noise testnet attracted over 1,300 users who placed wagers across 14 attention markets tracking crypto topics using social media data from Kaito. Carafa noted the 11-member team was not expecting Noise’s level of viral interest, and they were able to “test it out for about five months before everything broke.”

The team is now preparing for a mainstream launch on Base, the Ethereum Layer 2 incubated by Coinbase, in “the coming months.” This launch will mark a turning point for what is arguably a new product category by opening it up to the public as well as “real capital,” helping to test its fundamental economic theory and social utility.

“From there, you get this objective measure of cultural relevance for the shared interests of the world,” Carafa said. 

Cutting through the noise 

While the internet is built around the concept of monetizing attention, Noise essentially measures the value of virality. 

“Attention is this super sought-after currency in modern culture, and in many ways, it overtakes or is considered more valuable than fundamentals, like great work or a healthy balance sheet,” Carafa said. “We really care about how relevance is going to change, not just where is it at today.”

During the testnet phase, Carafa said the platform helped uncover an interesting relationship between attention market interest in Pump.fun and the price of the pre-ICO PUMP perp on Hyperliquid. “We found this intertwined lead-lag relationship between all the attention data that we had and the way that that market ended up playing out on Hyperliquid,” Carafa said.

“Attention seemed to be both leading and following price, but you couldn’t really use one to predict the other,” Carafa noted.

One aspect of Noise that is truly distinct from the leading prediction markets, Kalshi and Polymarket, which combined see billions of dollars worth of monthly trading activity, is the “continuous” design of its markets. Rather than offering a binary “yes or no” option on the outcome of an event on a particular date, Noise measures how trends change over time.

“It’s like a stock market for trends or attention,” Carafa said. “We really want to drive informative prices. We want people to come to Noise to see how trends have evolved. That information — seeing how ideas gain and lose relevance — can be very, very relevant and valuable for all types of industries.”

Carafa said the fresh financing will help fund Noise’s continued development and expansion, including its growing data needs, especially as the team breaks out beyond the crypto information sphere.

Who is paying attention?

Noise’s angels include several prominent crypto and tech builders, including new media moguls Jordi Hays, of TBPN, and Jackson Dahl, of Dialectic, musician Justin “3lau” Blau, Kaito’s Yu Hu, and crypto investors and theorists Gaby Goldberg and Kain Warwick. David Phelps, co-founder of Jokerace, another onchain platform for measuring sentiment, is also a backer.

“I’m very excited about a world where people are incentivized to give their attention to the things that matter to them,” Phelps told The Block, noting the platforms are parallel but not competitive. “That’s what excites me about Noise, and that’s what excited me about JokeRace.”

And although Carafa and his two co-founders, all from the University of Southern California, entered the crypto space with a “‘competition is for losers’ mentality” in their attempt to “create our own category or die trying,” he also said “If by the time we’re fully live for six months and we don’t have direct competitors, something seriously wrong has happened.”

Perhaps an attention market for the startup is needed?

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