Blockstream has gotten a $21 million boost from some leading tech figures. The investment will go towards development of its sidechains initiative, which aims to create an entire ecosystem of alternative blockchains supporting the decentralized transfer of digital property. The 'sidechains paper' is said to have been downloaded over 10,000 times within the first few days.
The round was led by Reid Hoffman, Khosla Ventures and Real Ventures, with investments from Nicolas Berggruen, Crypto Currency Partners, FuturePerfect Ventures, Danny Hillis, Eric Schmidt’s Innovation Endeavors, Max Levchin, Mosaic Ventures, Ray Ozzie, Ribbit Capital, Jerry Yang’s AME Cloud Ventures and several others.
Notably, Reid Hoffman and Jerry Yang are Linkedin and Yahoo co-founders, respectively.
Prior to the investment, the first founders recruited top multidisciplinary talent, forming its 11 co-founders.
In a blog post, Blockstream co-founder Austin Hill says his venture differentiates itself from the multiple startups looking to build the Bitcoin economy, some whic have received millions in funding:
"Blockstream is the first company extending the capabilities at the protocol level to support massive scaling of Bitcoin and Blockchain technology to a broad range of asset types. Put another way, the extension mechanism of sidechains, the company’s initial area of focus, allows any number of so far unthought of developments to happen in an open and interoperable way."
For a detailed list of recent investment and M&A activity in the crypto industry, please visit the DC Magnates Crypto Deal Table.
