Horizen Labs — a tech firm that helps businesses build distributed ledger platforms — has raised $4 million in funding, according to a blog post published on April 11.
Horizen Labs initially aimed to raise $2 million in seed funding, but overshot its goal and received $4 million from Digital Currency Group — an institutional trading firm focused on cryptocurrencies, seed stage fund Liberty City Ventures, and other independent investors.
The company intends to develop sidechain-as-a-service products. Sidechains can be deployed to handle commercial blockchain usage, performing various tasks distributed accordingly to increase productivity or efficiency.
According to Barry Silbert, founder and CEO of Digital Currency Group, said that the sidechain product gives allows businesses “to incorporate customized digital ledger technology into their operations, removing a significant barrier to blockchain adoption and advancing the industry as a whole.”
As a survey by Big Four audit company KPMG published in February revealed, 48 percent of C-level executives believe blockchain is likely to change the way they do business in the next three years. When asked about the possibility of implementing blockchain in their companies, 41 percent of respondents said they are likely to use the technology.
Another study released in January, showed that 40 percent of institutional investors surveyed think that blockchain “could be the most transformative technology since the Internet.” Additionally, just under a third of investors interviewed believed businesses would need to find a head of blockchain on their boards within the next five years. 38 percent also considered firms would need to reveal their approach to the technology to investors within that time frame.
