Founded in 2018, Blocknative builds and operates critical infrastructure for monitoring and managing public blockchain transactions. Today, we are excited to announce that we have raised $12.0 million in new Series A financing, bringing our total raised to more than $19.0 million.
We are thrilled – and humbled – to welcome a number of new investors to the Blocknative team, including:
- Rho Capital’s Ignition Fund, which lead the round
- Robot Ventures / Robert Leshner
- Altonomy Ventures
- Kain Warwick and Jordan Momtazi of Synthetix
- Ryan Sean Adams and David Hoffman, founders of Bankless
- Stani Kulechov, founder and CEO of Aave
- Diogo Monica, co-founder and president of Anchorage
They join our existing roster of investors, including:
In conjunction with this financing, we are welcoming Rho Capital partner Dan Ruch to our Board of Directors as well as MyCrypto founder and CEO Taylor Monahan to our Board of Advisors.
Delivering core blockchain infrastructure
When Chris Meisl, our co-founder and CTO, and I first started exploring the mempool, we saw the opportunity to build something new, different, and necessary for the Web3 ecosystem. And we began to appreciate the challenges of building a global, high availability, low-latency real-time transaction monitoring platform.
The mempool seemed esoteric when we launched our first offering at ETHDenver 2019. But since then, the Dark Forest has moved front-and-center. Today, our ecosystem broadly understands that the mempool impacts every user, transaction, protocol, and trading strategy – from the current ETH gas price to major crypto crashes like Black Thursday. And, since all public blockchain networks require pre-consensus mechanisms, the menagerie of mempool-related challenges will both persist and multiply in the years ahead.
As a result, today our solutions are widely deployed across the Web3 ecosystem – by forward-thinking builders and traders including Aavegotchi, Altonomy, Badger, Balancer, Bancor, Compound, Curve, Gitcoin, Nifty Gateway, Optimism, Synthetix, UMA, Yearn, Zapper, and hundreds of others – in order to:
- Stream real-time mempool data.
- Accurately estimate Ethereum gas prices.
- Simulate Ethereum transactions to improve protocol security and trade with an edge.
- Provide instant dapp connect wallet button support for the top hardware and software web3 wallets.
- Deliver real-time transaction notifications to their end-users.
- Offer an industry-leading ETH gas API.
Over the past three years, our team has pushed forward the state-of-the-art in blockchain transaction monitoring. Today our global platform supports Ethereum, xDai, Binance Smart Chain, and Bitcoin – with additional L1 and L2 support in the works. Along the way, we have consistently delivered industry-leading solutions such as Mempool Explorer, Gas Platform, Simulation Platform, Onboard, and Notify – with much more to come.
Looking ahead
With this new financing, we are well-positioned to evolve and expand our core data platform as well as intentionally grow our team. Our financing also brings some of the industry's leading minds to the table. I asked them to weigh in on Blocknative, and here is a sampling of what they had to say:
“The short seconds between when a blockchain transaction is submitted, and when it is final, is the most valuable and important moment in finance—and also the least understood. Blocknative is developing crucial infrastructure to monitor & manage blockchain transaction processing.”
— Robert Leshner, Robot Ventures
“It's no exaggeration to say every important event in crypto happens in the mempool first. That means every entity that touches a blockchain like Ethereum needs infrastructure and tooling to master mempool data. Blocknative is tackling one of the biggest infrastructure opportunities in crypto and, since every entity running processes on public chains in the future will need this infrastructure, the opportunity scales with blockchain demand.”
— Ryan Sean Adams, Bankless
“Fast and reliable access to mempool data is an indispensable part of blockchain infrastructure for trading, research, contract execution, compliance, and more. But the difficulty in global node operations, network optimization, and mining pool collaboration necessitates a dedicated, expert solution. We are long-term users and partners of Blocknative and thrilled to be part of this round to explore even more usage of mempool data.”
— Ricky Li, Altonomy Ventures
“Blocknative is building critical infrastructure for understanding the user environment. Having a clear view of mempool data leads to tighter analysis – and better decision-making – across the board. We’re thrilled to be supporting the team.”
— Jordan Momtazi, Synthetix
"Building industrial scale crypto infrastructure is more than challenging. The team at Blocknative has built an impressive foundation. I am excited to share best practices from our experience in designing and operating mission-critical infrastructure for the most demanding financial institutions."
— Diogo Monica, Anchorage
“Ignorance may be bliss but knowledge is the key to thriving in this fast-moving, financially-incentivized industry. Blocknative has been disseminating unique insights into a previously unexplored aspect of our ecosystem and this shows their dedication and drive. I am honored to be a part of this journey and thrilled that so many see value in what Blocknative is unearthing.”
— Taylor Monahan, MyCrypto
"We have been investing in emerging technology ecosystems for more than 40 years. Today, the leading financial services providers are increasingly interested in participating meaningfully in public blockchain networks. We surveyed the crypto infrastructure landscape and rapidly singled out Blocknative for its differentiated capabilities, unique data assets, and professional team. We could not be more excited for the road ahead."
— Dan Ruch, Rho Capital Partners
"The crypto industry is rapidly realizing that it is not enough to simply submit transactions. Transactions must be designed to reach their destination in critical moments. Blocknative is operating at the leading edge of the emerging domain of transaction design. We are thrilled to provide material support as they pioneer new forms of visibility and guarantee for the Web3 ecosystem’s most critical asset: transactions themselves.”
— Gavin McDermott, IDEO CoLab Ventures
“Not only has Blocknative repeatedly delivered against an ambitious product roadmap, but the value of these products is reflected in the quality of clients relying on Blocknative infrastructure — including the majority of the top DeFi protocols as well as many of the top crypto trading firms. I’m thrilled to open this next chapter in the Blocknative journey with a stellar group of highly value-add investors, founders, and angels.”
— Spencer Bogart, Blockchain Capital
"As Blocknative's first institutional investor, Foundry has partnered deeply with Matt and Chris as they have focused on building mission-critical infrastructure that solves a fundamental challenge for public blockchain networks. Together, Blocknative's team and technology are built to last."
— Seth Levine, Foundry Group
Join us on our journey
Today, we are regarded as experts in mempool data infrastructure – and are just getting started. We are fortunate to work closely with many of the top crypto projects, protocols, and traders. We have a rich product roadmap – developed in collaboration with our customers – that will further illuminate the Dark Forest.
Of course, we are growing our team. If you are a member of the Web3 ecosystem – or aspire to become one! – and want to help tackle some of its most challenging and relevant problems, please check out our Career Hub and apply to join us on our journey. And if you are a builder or trader, we invite you to go hands-on with our industry-leading transaction monitoring and management platform.
As always, if you have any questions, please connect with our team in our Discord Community or via Twitter @mcutler and @blocknative.
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