Bitcoin and blockchain infrastructure company Blockstream Corp Inc., said Tuesday it has raised $210 million in new funding led by Fulgur Ventures.
The company said the funds will be used to expand the development and adoption of the company’s bitcoin layer 2 technology, which is used to scale up blockchain transactions, mining operations and financial products development.
Blockstream’s Liquid Network, a layer 2 solution conceived by Blockstream co-founder and Chief Executive Dr. Adam Back, addresses the growing demand for secure, scalable bitcoin-based financial products by providing a “side blockchain” protocol built on top of the bitcoin blockchain.
Liquid’s features allow it to provide faster transactions, at one-minute block times compared with 10 minutes previously, confidential transactions and new asset types such as securities and digital collectibles. The network also brings greater scalability to the bitcoin blockchain and programmability, allowing developers to build applications on the blockchain.
The company said more than $1.8 billion in assets, including stablecoins, tokenized bonds and securities have been issued on the Liquid Network since its launch in 2018. “This latest fundraise represents a defining moment for Blockstream as we embark on a critical new phase of growth to further bridge the gap between Bitcoin and the wider world of finance,” said Back.
An example of how Liquid has been used for financial services is Mexican fintech operator Mifiel digitizing more than $1 billion in promissory notes for debt financing between lenders and global investment banks on the network.
The Liquid Network works alongside Blockstream’s Lightning Network service, Core Lightning, a protocol implementation that enables faster, cheaper and more scalable bitcoin transactions. It works by consolidating transactions for assets, stablecoins and bitcoin for payments. It also works with the company’s cloud-hosted infrastructure Greenlight, the company’s “Lightning-as-a-service” offering that allows developers to integrate LN into their apps with a few lines of code.
In addition to the financing news, Blockstream appointed Michael Minkevich chief operating officer. Minkevich previously worked at the software development firm Luxoft, where he was responsible for product engineering.
“Blockstream has a unique product portfolio and one of the best engineering teams building reliable Bitcoin solutions, making it perfectly suited to lead the ongoing transformation of the fintech industry,” said Minkevich.