Joseph Tsai, Co-Founder and Executive Vice President of Chinese tech giant Alibaba, has recently taken a significant interest in Web3. Shibuya, a Web3 video platform, received a seed round of funding of $6.9 million on December 8, led by a16z crypto and Variant, which was also the first Web3 startup to publicly accept an investment from Joseph Tsai.

This is not the first time Tsai has crossed paths with Web3 and crypto. On December 28, 2021, the entrepreneur tweeted: “I like cryptocurrencies” and as of today his Twitter homepage still shows a pinned video with the caption: “What is the crypto equivalent of a 1000 token coin? ten cents?”

Shibuya, launched by digital artist Emily Yang, was valued at $50 million in this $6.9 million funding round. “The name Shibuya originally refers to a famous neon-lit intersection in Tokyo,” Yang said. Yang has loved animated movies since she was a child. With her deepening understanding of blockchain and cryptocurrency, she hopes that through Shibuya, filmmakers will be able to trust fans instead of the Hollywood movie mode of investment and distribution.

Shibuya is not an NFT video platform in the strict sense. In fact, it produces long videos in the form of community co-creation. With the official team as the main force, NFT owners decide the direction of the story by voting and contributing innovative content.

Unlike the traditional streaming platform, Shibuya prioritizes decentralization and uses blockchain technology to securely publish monetized content, allowing users to participate in movie production as if they were playing a game. Shibuya’s Web3 content creation model doesn’t stop there. Emily Yang said that the next chapter of Shibuya’s current film White Rabbit will introduce new interactive mechanisms, adding that the company has been thinking five steps ahead about new ways to interact with NFT holders.

Shibuya recently partnered with Azuki, a well-known NFT project, to allow NFT holders to vote on which image of Azuki will appear as a guest in White Rabbit, directed by Emily Yang and Maciej Kuciara, a visual artist. With three to five clips, White Rabbit tells the story of Mirai, a young heroine who ventures into a world full of mystery and danger. The story takes place in the future, when the development of computers has endangered the blockchain and Mirai strives to protect it from it.

Although the movie is free, the producers have added an “economic system” to the movie, allowing users to participate, finance, decide the outcomes, and become part owners of the video. Users will decide the direction of the story by buying NFTs. If the user votes for the popular option, they will be rewarded with $WRAB tokens and early voting will also be rewarded with additional $WRAB tokens.

After the film is completed, Shibuya will store it on the blockchain, and the community with $WRAB tokens will become the actual controller and owner of the film, and each community member will have the corresponding rights and interests through of the tokens it owns.

Yang hopes that Shibuya can become the Web3 version of A24, an independent film production studio that has produced films like “Everything Everywhere All at Once”, “Ex Machina”, “Moonlight”, “The Farewell”, etc.

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In recent years, due to issues such as content removal, revenue distribution, and advertising modes on centralized video platforms like YouTube, various decentralized Web3 video platforms have emerged. Livepeer, for example, focuses on providing users with unfiltered video content. DTube offers cryptocurrency rewards for active registered users and creators who upload videos, and cancels the upload mode of ads. 3Speak emphasizes that ownership of the platform’s assets and communities belongs to the users, and the more tokens they have, the more say they have in the governance of the platform.