Filament, a startup looking to bring the Blockchain to tomorrow’s Internet of Things (IoT), has raised $5 million.
The round was led by Bullpen Capital, with contributions from Verizon Ventures, Crosslink Capital, Samsung Ventures, Digital Currency Group, Haystack, Working Lab Capital, Techstars, among others.
The prospective IoT envisions a world of interconnected devices, made more efficient by the sharing of real-time data. A joint project between IBM and Samsung incorporates technologies including Ethereum, the Bitcoin blockchain, BitTorrent amd TeleHash.
Filament works with the latter three, plus TMesh for long-range mesh networking, and Jose, a contract management protocol. The funding will go toward producing ‘taps’ for customers ranging from smaller businesses to Furtune 50 companies in the oil and gas, manufacturing, agriculture and mining sectors.
These taps would, for example, power the storage and transmission of soil data in distributed sensors, helping to optimize the usage and “contract management” of resources. The taps are designed to function even without connectivity to the internet, and can connect to each other from distances of 100 meters or 10 miles.
The blockchain would assist with the distributed storage of data on devices themselves, as opposed to central servers. According to Filament’s website, the blockchain would also make it possible “to generate new, recurring sources of revenue by selling access to your devices or data.” Mesh radio technologies like TMesh would enable the devices to connect with each other even without internet connectivity.
According to Fortune, the taps go for $25, with large volume orders bringing the price to between $10 and $12.
The funding is only the second in the cryptocurrency and blockchain technology spaces this month.
