StarkWare Valuation Hits $2B After $50M Series C Round

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  • This fund­ing round comes just sev­en months after the layer‑2 devel­op­er pro­to­col raised $75 mil­lion in a Series B round
  • “The more that blockchain tech­nol­o­gy is avail­able, to every­one from a lone farmer in the devel­op­ing world to a busi­nessper­son in New York, the more we’ll dis­cov­er its trans­for­ma­tive poten­tial,” Eli Ben-Sas­son said to Blockworks

Ethereum-based Stark­Ware has raised $50 mil­lion in a Series C round led by Sequoia Cap­i­tal, bring­ing its val­u­a­tion to $2 billion. 

This fund­ing round comes just sev­en months after the layer‑2 devel­op­er pro­to­col raised $75 mil­lion in a Series B round. Exist­ing investors also par­tic­i­pat­ed in the round, includ­ing Par­a­digm, Alame­da Research, Three Arrows Cap­i­tal and Founders Fund. 

Stark­Ware is a four-year-old start­up, cre­at­ed by four co-founders Eli Ben-Sas­son, Alessan­dro Chiesa, Uri Kolod­ny, and Michael Riabzev, that offers ser­vices for blockchains to scale through ‘STARK’ proofs, which are Ethereum-based prod­ucts using rollups tech­nol­o­gy that were invent­ed by Ben-Sas­son and Riabzev. 

“The truth is, we didn’t need the mon­ey. Our StarkEx scal­ing engine is prof­itable and is thriv­ing, pow­er­ing such cryp­to suc­cess sto­ries as dYdX and Sorare. You get a sense of the size of the oper­a­tion when you con­sid­er that we’re mint­ing all the NFTs for the new Immutable X NFT plat­form,” said Kolod­ny in an inter­view with Blockworks. 

“But the funds help us to grow our oper­a­tion even more quick­ly than we have until now and enable us to give the best main­net launch imag­in­able to our new plat­form StarkNet. This will be ful­ly deployed on main­net in the com­ing weeks, and it will be a game-chang­er, start­ing a build­ing boom on blockchain,” Kolod­ny added. 

The Stark-based solu­tions include its two prod­ucts StarkEx, a per­mis­sioned valid­i­ty-rollup, and StarkNet, a per­mis­sion­less decen­tral­ized ZK-rollup, which aim to increase speed and reduce the cost of Ethereum gas fees. 

“The more that blockchain tech­nol­o­gy is avail­able, to every­one from a lone farmer in the devel­op­ing world to a busi­nessper­son in New York, the more we’ll dis­cov­er its trans­for­ma­tive poten­tial,” Ben-Sas­son said to Block­works. “And the more we advance our scal­ing tech­nol­o­gy and make it more effi­cient, the low­er the car­bon foot­print of each blockchain trans­ac­tion will become. Giv­en that blockchain use will inevitably rise, this is impor­tant for future gen­er­a­tions,” Ben-Sas­son added. 

Pri­or to this fund­ing, StarkWare’s tech­nol­o­gy was only avail­able to clients through its scal­ing Engine StarkEx. But the new cap­i­tal raised will sup­port the deploy­ment of its StarkNet layer‑2 plat­form, which will allow any­one to build blockchain appli­ca­tions with its tech­nol­o­gy, the com­pa­ny said.

“Via StarkNet, it will open up a brave new world where all the dApps that peo­ple have dreamed about but which weren’t viable because of high gas fees will start to be built,” Ben-Sas­son said. 

“Our plans for the future focus on scal­ing more, and more effi­cient­ly, and real­ly see­ing our tech­nol­o­gy mak­ing a dif­fer­ence. We want to see it help­ing com­pa­nies to suc­ceed, also help­ing the gen­er­al pub­lic and the envi­ron­ment,” Ben-Sas­son added.


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  • Jacque­lyn Melinek

    Jacque­lyn Melinek is a Hous­ton-based reporter cov­er­ing dig­i­tal asset funds and mar­kets. She pre­vi­ous­ly report­ed on ener­gy mar­kets for S&P Glob­al Platts and Bloomberg News and is pub­lished in over 65 news out­lets. She grad­u­at­ed from the Uni­ver­si­ty of North Car­oli­na at Chapel Hill with a degree in Media and Journalism.

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