Antic: Co-Ownership

Antic ?is a pluggable layer that allows groups to purchase products and experiences together in a seamless and user-native way. The company came out of stealth in late September and raised an exciting $7M seed round from Pantera, Seven Seven Six, Sheva Capital, Sound Ventures, Shrug, Rainfall, and Dapper Labs, along with many angels.?

Why co-ownership?

Antic is creating a new economic entity: “the group customer.” Co-ownership isn’t yet mainstream, but emerging ownership designs paired with a growing emphasis on community is accelerating its popularity.?

Web3 assets are generally top of mind when it comes to co-ownership – but non-cryptonative companies can benefit greatly from these structures as well. By integrating the option to “buy together” on a platform, a substantial amount of revenue is unlocked and the barrier to entry for asset ownership and experiences decreases dramatically. Further, a shared ownership model creates community around the object or experience being co-owned since each person has a stake in it. We’ve seen?Fractional ?(now Tessera) do this well with shared ownership of singular NFTs, but there are many untapped marketplaces in both web2 and web3 that could benefit from providing users the option to purchase together rather than buy alone.?

Antic offers a seamless “buy together” integration. Source: Antic

Since their launch in late September, Antic has seen interest from companies spanning web3, gaming, collectibles, and entertainment. Many brands are so eager to integrate Antic’s “buy together” button since it allows sites to attract a higher number of customers, generate more revenue, and create a unique social unlock.?

Antic’s co-ownership mission has three core categories:

• Co-ownership over digital assets (for both cryptonatives and non cryptonatives)
• Co-ownership over intellectual property (IP)
• Crowdfunding and other capital pooling / execution mechanisms

The company’s main focus is on creating a B2B2C checkout mechanism for customers that will make buying any kind of asset simple and collaborative. Part of their user-focused mission is to abstract away much of the blockchain-native interfacing and center the user experience around seamless checkout.?On virtually any platform that sells assets, Antic’s infrastructure can be integrated to allow for co-ownership.?Blockchain technology supports programmable coordination in a way that traditional tech stacks can’t, and Antic is leveraging it to reduce friction in these group purchases.?

Antic has applications ranging from gaming, to entertainment, to e-commerce, and more. Source: Antic

Antic’s Architecture

Antic operates under the assumption that users prefer to buy with individuals with whom they share pre-existing trust, rather than a trustless format that’s common in many decentralized protocols today. By leveraging existing relationships, Antic can provide value to a wider market and subsequently help businesses grow their user bases.?

Antic’s infrastructure is built on Ethereum and Polygon (EVM compatible) and is pluggable to many different types of on-chain and off-chain applications. For web2 giants such as Netflix, Antic can offer embedded co-ownership mechanisms into their platform as a subscription payment option for users. For web3-native platforms, such as NFT marketplaces, users can be offered the option to include others in their purchase of an asset. There’s also interesting applications for the gaming sector: web3 games can now add group in-game purchases to their platforms. Gaming is already an incredibly community-driven sector, and adding co-ownership will further unlock value on existing platforms. Platforms involving IP also benefit from the shared ownership model: by fairly distributing credit and allowing audiences to co-own IP, value creation and reach expands substantially. Users can even invest in financial assets together with different ownership weights for different contributors.

Antic has interesting applications for fintech and ecommerce businesses. Source: Antic

Forbes ?notes that attempts at co-ownership mechanisms are currently mostly concentrated in the crypto sphere (shared virtual property ownership, fractionalized NFTs, treasury DAOs, etc). However, many non-crypto consumer-facing products and experiences lack the option of buying together, yet users still find a way to “share” in an unorganized way (e.g. someone logging into their friend’s Netflix account every time they want to stream, or buying baseball cards together and Venmoing each other after).?

Using Antic is therefore differentiated when compared with exclusively on-chain mechanisms such as participating in a treasury DAO. With a treasury DAO, in most instances users must deposit the money first and then the asset to be purchased is decided upon later. In many other protocols, shared ownership involves the hassle of?extra tokenization processes ?in order to distribute the asset among users. Antic’s core protocol prints multisigs based on a pre-decided purpose, enabling a set of predetermined users to seamlessly participate in the purchase. Companies can then easily integrate Antic’s API into their platform to support shared ownership. Another benefit of co-ownership is that for on-chain purchases, gas fees are lowered since they’re split between each of the parties involved.?

Smart contract auditing for Antic was recently done by Quantstamp.?

Co-ownership capabilities are easy to implement with Antic’s API. Source: Antic

Antic’s Team

Tal Dadia serves as founder and CEO at Antic, and brings experience from JP Morgan as their VP of Blockchain Products and Engineering. Prior to that, he was a blockchain research engineer at?COTI Group , and has held numerous roles in business development and back-end engineering. He also comes from an academic research background in decentralized governance and cryptographic identities. Tal is joined by Adi Elimelech, VP of R&D, who has over 14 years of startup experience and works on driving product-led growth at Antic. The team has now expanded to 14 people and is growing rapidly, especially on the engineering and product side.?

Antic’s Future

Antic plans to expand their EVM-based infrastructure to blockchains Solana and Flow next. Antic is also adding more and more companies to their closed beta and is currently in partnership talks with companies spanning entertainment, art, gaming, collectibles, and payments to bring their tech to a wider market. By abstracting away the blockchain piece and allowing users to co-own nearly anything, Antic will bring buying together to the mainstream and make more coordinated and flexible purchasing options the standard for both web2 and web3 platforms.?

• Paul Veradittakit

DISCLAIMER

Pantera Capital Puerto Rico Management, LP and its affiliates (“Pantera”) makes investments in crypto assets and in blockchain-related companies.?Pantera and/or its affiliates or personnel may be an investor in, or have relationships or other business arrangements related to, certain instruments, companies and/or projects discussed herein.?This document does not contain any advertisement for Pantera’s investment advisory services, or any other services or products, whether provided by Pantera or otherwise.?The information and opinions presented in this document are solely those of Paul Veradittakit; they do not represent, and should not be interpreted as representative of, the views of Pantera or any other individual working for Pantera, and do not represent investment, legal, tax, financial, or any other form of, advice or recommendations.?Neither Pantera nor Mr. Veradittakit is acting, or purports to act, as an investment adviser or in a fiduciary capacity with respect to any recipient of this paper.?Information contained in?this document?is believed to be reliable, but no representation is made regarding such information’s fairness, correctness, accuracy, reasonableness or completeness.?There is no obligation to update this document or to otherwise notify a reader if any matter stated statement or information contained here changes or subsequently is shown to be inaccurate.?Nothing contained herein constitutes any representation or warranty as to future performance of any financial instrument or company.?Forward-looking statements should not be relied upon, and performance or outcomes may differ materially from what is contemplated herein.?Opinions included here incorporate subjective judgments or may be based on incomplete information.?This document does not constitute or contain an offer to sell or a solicitation to buy any securities or a recommendation to enter into any transaction, and no reliance should be placed on this document in making investment decisions.?