CasperLabs Raises $14.5M by Future-Proofing Blockchain
Fresh off a $14.5 million dollar Series A raise, the team at CasperLabs has been traveling the world from Singapore to Los Angeles to market the open-source blockchain platform.
CasperLabs Roadshow in Asia
The CasperLabs team has been very busy in Asia this last month. Asia is a unique market of its own due to the significant increase in the adoption of the technology throughout corporations, institutions, hedge funds, startups and so forth. On many stops of that tour, they found that the value of blockchain technologies has been recognized across different leadership levels and company executives.
Many Asian consumers on a whole also have a deep level of understanding regarding distributed ledger technology (DLT). There’s immense potential in adoption and we already see the traction rates across countries like Japan, Korea, and China. CasperLabs team spoke about how very excited they were to learn, tour the market, and share updates on the progress of the platform, all of which were incredibly well-received.
Biggest Problem in Blockchain Today
There are a couple of things. On a very high level, today’s platforms can’t scale in technology, usability, value, or even trust. This has forced a lot of compromises in performance, security, and decentralization.
CasperLabs focuses on “future-proofing” blockchain and we believe this is the largest problem our industry faces right now.
“While many first-generation blockchains have solved some key fundamental issues, builders can still become victims of their own success. We need to take the next step with proof of stake protocols and build technology that is optimized for upgradability and ease of use.” – Mrinal Manohar, CEO
Future Proofing Blockchain
That’s a big question. Simply put, CBC Casper is a method to keep all “parties” in agreement without compromising decentralization. Essentially, CBC Casper is an innovative approach to consensus that keeps all the best properties of decentralized public blockchains but improves energy efficiency and throughput.
Most consensus protocols try to arrive at a consensus-based on the order of transactions. CBC Casper is different, as consensus is formed only on the heaviest block — and not the block’s contents. As a result, the protocol design supports features like sharding and sidechains that can further improve performance and customizability.
CasperLabs Ethos Stands Out
CasperLabs is a very proud team with expertise in building products, companies and communities. CasperLabs stands out not only by its credentials, but more so what they stand for as a company. At CasperLabs, decentralization is more than just a product feature, it’s the foundational ethos shared by the entire team.
“Decentralization above all else. It doesn’t just describe our platform, it’s the guiding ethos for what we build, and everything we do as an organization.” – Mrinal Manohar, CEO
This shared belief dictates what they build and everything they do as an organization. They truly believe decentralization is paving the way for a new era of equitable innovation, and it aims to explore what blockchain’s next frontier will look like with that as a guiding principle.
Closing the Seed Round
Both of Casper’s funding rounds have been unique. What’s been really exciting to watch is the pure excitement brewing around the product. They had a very successful seed round thanks to participants who understood the vision they had. What they’ve noticed to watch this time around is seeing aspects of those visions actually come to life, which in turn, fostered a lot of the excitement around the platform.
For instance, CasperLabs recently launched our DevNet allowing many developers to spin up a node and bond to the network. Prior to that, it announced Node 0.7 and consistently hit all of the milestones. Most recently, we also announced the joint research project with the team at HDAC technology to build out Project Friday.
See the team for CasperLabs at CIS on October 15-16, 2019 at the Los Angeles Convention Center.
About CIS
CIS is the leading conference & expo focused on blockchain investing, building and mainstream adoption. An exclusive, curated, high-impact, informative and thought-provoking event presented by some of the world’s foremost innovators, change makers and prominent leaders in the blockchain ecosystem.
About CasperLabs
CasperLabs is the blockchain platform purpose-built to scale opportunity for everyone. Building toward blockchain’s next frontier, CasperLabs is designed for real-world applications without sacrificing usability, cost, decentralization, or security. CasperLabs removes the barriers that prevent mainstream blockchain adoption by making blockchain friendly to use, open to the world, and future-proof to support innovations today and tomorrow. Guided by open-source principles and built from the ground up to empower individuals, the team seeks to provide an equitable foundation made for long-lasting impact.