Blockchain solutions developer Waves Platform has secured $120 million in a recent funding round and will use the capital to launch its private blockchain platform and system integrator called Vostok.
The funding round was led by Dolfin, a London-based financial services group, and many private investors also took part in it.
Waves started developing Vostok earlier this year, and with the newly secured fundings, the company is aiming for a launch as soon as in early 2019. However, the company is targeting only European and Asian markets with the initial launch.
“The Vostok project lies at the intersection of several disruptive technologies, including Blockchain, Big Data, Artificial Intelligence and the Industrial Internet of Things. By implementing these in the IT infrastructures of corporations and government agencies, we lay the foundation for the digital economy,” said Sasha Ivanov, founder and CEO of Waves Platform and the Vostok project. “This is logic [sic] continuation of the work we have been doing over the past few years, advancing the Waves platform's technological achievements yet further.”
Amid this news, the value of the Waves token gained more than 50 percent in the past 24 hours and is now trading at $4.25. With this sudden surge in demand, the market cap of the coin is now just shy of $425 million.
Alternative to Ethereum?
Waves emerged as an alternative to the smart-contract leader Ethereum and claimed to be a much efficient platform. Though the platform is much faster than Bitcoin and Ethereum, processing 6.1 million transactions in a day at its peak, in terms of adaptability, it is way behind Ethereum.
With Vostok, the company is taking a whole new turn in its business. Investors have expressed their optimism regarding Ivanov and his team’s goal with Vostok. Dolfin’s CEO, Denis Nagy, said: “London is becoming an increasingly important destination globally for DLT and other disruptive technology projects. We are proud that Waves and Vostok have selected London as one of their technology сentres, as well as their trusted global hub for legal and financial expertise.”
“Despite heightened investors' interest in digital technologies, attracting private funding is often problematic due to the lack of financial infrastructure to support and structure the deals in the DLT space. Together with the Vostok team, we have developed a model familiar to private equity investors yet customized to enable the financing of the Vostok blockchain project,” Nagy added.
Ambitious Roadmap
Earlier this year, Waves launched its own decentralized crypto exchange. Moreover, the project has just launched a blockchain KYC standard for token issuers in partnership with the Switzerland-based nonprofit BetterTokens.
