Blockless, a decentralized physical infrastructure network (DePIN) project focused on providing computing power support, announced that it has raised $8 million in pre-seed and seed funding rounds.
NGC Ventures led the $3 million pre-seed round, while M31 Capital and Frachtis (a new fund formed by Xavier Meegan, chief investment officer at staking firm Chorus One) co-led the $5 million seed round, Blockless said. It was revealed on Tuesday. Other investors in both rounds include No Limit Holdings, MH Ventures, Interop Ventures and Plassa Capital, Blockless said.
The project closed its pre-seed round in March 2022, but is now taking it public along with its seed round, co-founder Butian Li, a former investor at NGC Ventures, told The Block. Li said the latest seed round began in February and closed in April. Both rounds consisted of SAFEs (Simple Contracts for Future Assets) with token warrants in a 1:1 ratio. She declined to comment on the valuation but said the terms of the two rounds were “similar.”
What is blockless?
Blockless is a DePIN project that allows users to automatically provide computing power to applications over the network.
“Users do not need to run a special node or download any software,” Li said. “Blockless has created the WebAssembly (WASM) application framework with the ability to embed ‘nested nodes’ in applications, meaning that when a user opens an application, it automatically provides computing resources to that specific application over the Blockless network. “
Blockless was inspired by “matchmaking services,” Li said. Just as Uber connects drivers with users, Blockless shows how to connect applications with users to meet their computing power needs over the network. Users will then receive rewards through the application and Blockless, Li said.
Blockless Network and Token Launch
Blockless will be launched in 2022 by Li, Derek Anderson (formerly Akash Network AKT
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), Michael Chen (formerly of Binance), and Liam Zhang (formerly a researcher at New York University).
Li said the project plans to launch a testnet in the coming weeks, and the mainnet and native token, called BLESS, are expected to launch in the third quarter of this year. Blockless uses the Cosmos SDK to create the native network and native token, Li added.
Blockless’ core team is based in Palo Alto, California. The total number of employees is 10, and Li plans to hire more in engineering, product, and ecosystem functions.
Blockless’ competitors include projects such as io.net and Fluence Network, Li said. In March, the io.net developer raised $30 million in Series A funding and reached a token valuation of $1 billion, as The Block reported at the time.
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