The Venture Codex

Led · Seed · Mar 2016

RSK Labs develops Rootstock (RSK), a two-way pegged sidechain that grafts Turing-complete smart contract functionality onto Bitcoin and issues smartBTC pegged 1:1 to bitcoin. The platform relies on merge-mining rather than creating a separate token and adds an off-chain protocol for near-instant payments. RSK currently reports ~400 payment transactions per second and aims to reach 2,000 tps using a second-layer Lumino solution. The company opened its Ginger production testnet to the public to enable broader developer testing. Financially, RSK raised $1.0m in seed funding a little over a year earlier and announced an additional $3.5m in pre-Series A contributions to fund R&D, security hardening and mainnet deployment. RSK is Buenos Aires–based and says its network is already supported by miners representing more than 55% of Bitcoin's hashing power, with another ~30% having expressed intent to join merge-mining. RSK Labs, based in Buenos Aires, Argentina, develops RootStock, a smart-contract platform with a two-way peg to the Bitcoin blockchain. The platform is secured by Bitcoin and is compatible with Ethereum. The company completed a $1M seed funding round to further develop the platform and expand its presence from Latin America to Asia, Europe and the US. RSK plans to open a private testnet by the end of April to a small number of miners, partner companies and users. In the following months wallets, block explorers and further network enhancements will be implemented by the company and its partners. A functional beta testnet is expected to be launched in September 2016.

Led · Equity · Jan 2016

SatoshiPay offers a blockchain-based instant payments platform for B2B cross-border money transfers and micropayment processing. Founded in 2014 and led by CEO Meinhard Benn, the company operates from London with a development office in Berlin. It was one of the first businesses to use the Stellar network commercially and is backed by Axel Springer. SatoshiPay has processed $650,000 in payments from over 200,000 accounts and its open-source Stellar wallet, Solar, has been downloaded more than 25,000 times across 40 countries. The company intends to use new funding to continue developing its B2B commercial cross-border payments solution and its digital wallets. SDF is a key partner providing maintenance and partner support for the Stellar decentralized ledger network. SatoshiPay is a London-based nanopayment software and blockchain company that enables online content providers to monetize digital content via bitcoin-based micropayments. Its two-way payment platform allows per-article, per-song, per-download or incremental payments (for example per paragraph or per minute of audio/video) as an alternative to paywalls and subscriptions. The platform is capable of processing nanopayments of €0.05 or less with minimal transaction fees. SatoshiPay released a beta integrating with WordPress in February 2016 and launched its first API in mid-2016 to extend reach to websites, internet applications (including mobile apps) and internet-connected software. In July 2016 the company announced a collaboration with Visa Europe’s innovation department on a proof-of-concept to deliver a trusted top-up service to a digital wallet using a Visa card. The company is based in London and also has an office in Berlin; it is in the process of raising approximately €1m in aggregate in the current round, which would value it at about €6m. SatoshiPay builds a two-way, in-browser nanopayments platform that lets consumers pay per article, view, song or download without software downloads or sign-ups. The platform leverages blockchain technology and supports micropayments of roughly €0.10 or less per transaction. Users have an on-site digital wallet balance available on each website that integrates the software. The company is led by Meinhard Benn and focuses on enabling online content providers to monetize digital content through instant, per-use payments. SatoshiPay raised €360K in funding to support continued product development. The company intends to use the funds to continue to build the product.