Ethereum-Based Skale Raises $10 Million from Crypto Investment Funds

Blockchain startup Skale Labs raised nearly $10 million to develop a blockchain scalability infrastructure for the Ethereum network, the company announced in a press release on October 4, 2018. 

Skale Labs Aims for Better Blockchain Infrastructure

Skale Labs, a San Francisco-based decentralized app (dApp) startup, has raised $9.65 million in funding to launch a network that can accelerate the performance of blockchain applications.

The company shared the news via a PRNewswire press release, where it stated that its funding comprised of an $8.86 million Simple Agreement For Future Tokens (SAFT) and a $785,000 seed SAFT, which was raised earlier in 2018.

According to the release, the most recent round of funding was led by Multicoin Capital,  a cryptocurrency investment firm that offers investors with public market liquidity. Other investors include Aspect Ventures, Blockchange Ventures, Boost.VC, Canaan Venture Partners, Galaxy Digital, FLOODGATE Fund, Hack.VC, Neo Global Capital, and Signia Venture Partners, among others.  

The company will use the raised funds to launch the Skale Network and the Skale Foundation. The Skale network, a fully permissionless, open source, peer-2-peer network, will be the company’s main focus, while the Skale Foundation will be a nonprofit organization dedicated to it. The release explained that the two would work similar to to the way the Ethereum Foundation supports the Ethereum Network.

The company’s eponymous network will be the first implementation of the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) on a Plasma chain. Following the launch, the company will release a fully-functional, Ethereum-integrated TestNet at the end of 2018, which should be followed by a MainNet at the beginning of 2019.

Skale Aims to Provide Better, Faster, More Efficient Scaling

The company said that it had created a new infrastructure that accelerates dApps built on smart contract platforms by enabling smart contracts to execute in a Layer 2 environment. The innovation will allow developers to instantly scale dApps to millions of transactions per second at a much lower cost than usual.

Skale Labs CEO Jack O’Holleran said that the company’s primary focus is helping Ethereum dApp developers scale applications.

“It takes a deep understanding of math and cryptography to build a secure scaling platform,” O’Holleran said in the release. “We are fortunate to have such a talented team of engineers with cryptography, physics, and informatics backgrounds. We are looking forward to bringing this Network to market in a fully open-source, P2P manner.”  

Kyle Samani, the managing partner at Multicoin Capital, also shares O’Holleran’s enthusiasm about the project, calling Skale Labs one of the most reliable and most well-rounded teams Multicoin seen in the space thus far.

Samani also believes that Skale is Ethereum’s best shot at fending off competition from other smart contract platforms and that the company is expected to make the Skale Network a vital component of the Web3 stack.