WazirX Founder-Led Lay-1 Blockchain Startup Shardeum Closes $18.2 Million Seed Funding Round

Shardeum, the Layer-1 blockchain startup, has raised $18.2 million (roughly Rs. 150 Crore) as part of its first seed funding round, close to eight months after its launch. Over 50 investors participated in the seed round, including Spartan Group, Big Brain Holdings, Jane Street and Foresight Ventures, according to a company announcement. Co-founded by Indian exchange WazirX's founder Nischal Shetty and blockchain architect Omar Syed, Shardeum is a proof-of-stake blockchain platform that uses dynamic state sharding technology in pursuit of efficiency gains.

According to the company, it's now valued at around $200 million (roughly Rs. 1,700 crore). Many influential angel investors including Balaji Srinivasan, Mayur Gupta, Michael Montero, Pankaj Gupta, Harsh Rajat, Nakul Gupta, Ajeet Khurana, Ravi Adusumalli also participated in the round.

The proceeds will be allocated towards ramping up the company's marketing efforts along with growing the development team to further enhance Shardeum's sharding technology and ecosystem development, the company said in a statement.

Over the next year, Shardeum will be actively hosting hackathons in India and the US and providing a platform that incentivises developers to build and grow the Shardeum ecosystem.

As Shardeum is an Ethereum virtual machine-based sharded blockchain, anything that works on Ethereum can work on Shardeum. The company (Shardeum Foundation) is based in Geneva, Switzerland. The startup has targeted a beta launch by the end of 2022 with a full launch expected to happen sometime within the first quarter of 2023. Shardeum also plans on later staging a public token sale.

In case you're wondering what makes a sharded blockchain network different from a regular one, 'sharding' helps split blockchain infrastructure into smaller pieces to try to scale the network. It helps increase block space for more transactions and reduces gas fees. Shardeum's architecture aims to resolve user experience issues faced by both users and developers of existing sharded blockchains.

Shardeum is just one of several new Layer 1 blockchains that have raised funds as of late. Others include Aptos, Sui and Sei Labs.

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