So-Col
The business, the turning points, and the decisions behind them.
01 / WHAT IT BUILT
What the company did
SO-COL (Social Collectables) was a Singapore-based Web3 social platform co-founded by influencer Irene Zhao and Benjamin Tang. It positioned itself as a decentralized alternative to Discord, Snapshot and OnlyFans: creators managed and engaged their communities through utility NFTs ('collectables') that token-gated memberships, exclusive content, private channels and rewards, built on StarkWare's StarkEx layer-2 and a decentralized ID protocol. It closed a $1.75 million seed round in February 2022 co-led by DeFiance Capital and Animoca Brands, with Three Arrows Capital, Mechanism Capital, Global Founders Capital and others participating, and was reportedly seeking a $100 million-valuation round in May 2022.
02 / So-Col FAILURE REASONS
Failure reasons
SO-COL never became a viable product despite the raise. Co-founder Irene Zhao herself later acknowledged the project's failure: she regretted not being transparent about financial struggles and consulting investors sooner, as the project's token price declined amid market and internal challenges. ZachXBT and other observers criticized her for launching a new memecoin instead of continuing SO-COL.
03 / EVENT HISTORY
Events in the structured record
- Seed round
SO-COL closes a $1.75 million seed round on February 8, 2022, co-led by DeFiance Capital and Animoca Brands; IreneDAO NFT collection serves as a proof of concept. A further raise at a $100 million valuation is sought in May 2022.
- Reported failure
Additional rounds ($3M in May 2022, $1.5M in March 2023) are reported, but the platform never launches at scale; co-founder Irene Zhao later acknowledges SO-COL's failure and its token's decline.
04 / CONTEMPORARY REBUILD ASSESSMENT
Difficulty of rebuilding this project today
Material for this section is being gathered and checked. It will appear here once ready.
Overall assessment: Not completed
05 / CAUSAL CHAIN
How the factors connect
- 01
Seed round Feb 8, 2022: $1.75M (DeFiance Capital, Animoca Brands co-lead).
- 02
May 2022: sought raise at $100M valuation (Blockchain Capital); reported later rounds brought total to ~$6.25M.
- 03
Platform never reached scale; founder acknowledged failure.
- 04
No reliable company-level loss figure disclosed.