New York based Mediachain; an open source platform using blockchain technology to track media ownership has received funding from two largest VC investors in blockchain, Union Square Ventures and Andreessen Horowitz to build an open media library.

The company announced that they received $1.5 million in seed funding from the two firms. In the funding round, RRE Ventures, Digital Currency Group and LDV Capital also participated along with investors Alexis Ohanian, William Mougayar, Kanyi Maqubela, David Lee, Mathieu Drouin and Brian Message.

According to the press release, co-founder of Mediachain Labs Denis Nazarov said that, “The internet is blind. Every day billions of images, songs, videos, and written works are shared online, but they quickly lose connection to their creator or any information about them as they are reposted. What if all data about media was completely open and decentralized, and developers could utilize the technology behind Shazam or Google Image Search to easily retrieve it?” He added further saying, “We’d know who made what, its history, or even how to pay the creator, in a completely decentralized, programmable way."

Participating organizations like The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), Getty Images and Europeana have contributed over 2 million images and related metadata to Mediachain. The new funding will build numerous additional services that will hopefully attract a wider user base.

Talking in the press release, Steve Heck, CTO of Getty Images said, “Innovation and disruption are the foundation of Getty Images, and we are always seeking new and creative ways to open up our extensive archive and encourage the sanctioned use of our award­ winning imagery.” Talking about the collaboration with Mediachain, he says, “We are excited to explore how Mediachain’s blockchain technology can automate image attribution to the benefit of our photographers and partners.”

Mediachain first announced in January 2016 that it is using the blockchain technology to create a massive media database. Mediachain combines a decentralized media library with open content identification technology to enable collaboratively registering, identifying, and tracking creative works online.

Mediachain was established by Jesse Walden and Denis Nazarov and is the first decentralized repository of digital media that retains the link between the media file and its author. Speaking to coindesk.com, Nazarov said that, “We created Mediachain not as a rights registry, but it’s more of a knowledge base that preserves information about attribution and information about its creator.”