Bison Trails, a New York-based enterprise-grade Blockchain infrastructure provider that is also a member of the Libra Association, announced today that it had completed a Series A funding round of financing to the tune of $25.5 million.
The round was led by Blockchain Capital; the list of participants also included Kleiner Perkins and Coinbase Ventures, joined by Collaborative Fund, A Capital, ConsenSys, and Sound Ventures. Early investors included Initialized, Accomplice, Galaxy Digital, and Notation.
”Crypto networks will continue to move towards active network participation models... further reinforcing the need” for solutions similar to Bison Trails
Bison Trails describes itself as a company that “removes the need for customers to spend resources on developing in-house security, DevOps, infrastructure, and blockchain protocol engineering competencies by providing a robust infrastructure for deploying participation node clusters on any protocol.” Thereby, the company claims to “lower the barriers to participating in a decentralized ecosystem.”
Emilie Choi, COO of Coinbase, said that “the team at Bison Trails shares our long-term vision of advancing the crypto ecosystem towards delivering massive utility at a global scale. Reliable, easy to use blockchain infrastructure is a prerequisite to achieving this end state.”
Emilie Choi, COO of Coinbase.
“We believe crypto networks will continue to move towards active network participation models (i.e., staking, voting, signaling, etc.), further reinforcing the need for solutions such as those that Bison Trails provides… Coinbase Ventures is happy to support mission-aligned founders like Bison Trails, as we collectively work towards expanding the crypto-economy."
Brad Stephens, Co-founder & Managing Partner of Blockchain Capital, said of Bison Trails that “new protocols and next-generation crypto networks involve active participation by investors, end-users and partners. Bison Trails’ Blockchain Infrastructure-as-a-Service platform makes this easy for all stakeholders.”
Brad Stephens, Co-founder & Managing Partner of Blockchain Capital.
Bison Trails remained in Libra as a number of other founding members dropped out
Bison Trails is one of the remaining members of the Libra Association following the decision of a number of US companies to exit the project last month.
We're proud to be a Founding Member of the Libra Association. We’re deeply committed to lowering the barriers of participation in global financial networks and we're actively working to help the blockchain ecosystem flourish in a responsible manner. https://t.co/KeTMA9E76n
— Bison Trails (@BisonTrails) October 15, 2019
Booking.com, Visa, Mastercard, eBay, Stripe, and Mercado Pago all made the decision to withdraw from Libra; while the reasons for the withdrawals were not entirely clear, the companies are suspected of having been concerned about preserving positive relationships with regulators.
(This article previously stated incorrectly that Bison Trails raised $24.5 million.)
