Blockai has announced it has raised $547,000 in seed funding to relaunch as a blockchain copyright service. Originally envisioned as a ‘Netscape for Bitcoin’ in 2015, Blockai (pronounced ‘block-i’) attempted to turn the blockchain into a kind of social media stream that would allow users to send messages and authenticate items. Now, Blockai is bidding for a new life as a tool that allows artists to authenticate and claim copyright over images.
According to AngelList, Social Starts, Sterling VC and Vectr Ventures contributed funding alongside roughly 15 angel investors including Betfair founder Josh Hannah and Epsilon Records founder Nate Houk.
In interview, CEO Nathan Lands called the latest version of the Blockai product "dramatically different" from its initial release, indicating that now any use of bitcoin or the blockchain is largely hidden from users.
Lands told CoinDesk: "Artists don’t want to send bitcoin. So we simplified [Blockai] down and found that was something people wanted, a simple way to get proof of ownership." A similar idea is currently being approached by blockchain industry startups Ascribe and Mediachain , among others, though Lands sought to position Blockai as more user-friendly.
Further, investors sought to stress the size of Blockai’s potential market as a reason for their support.
"By just looking at the size and value of stock photography libraries and the myriad of photo storage services professionals use like Flickr, Google Photos and Apple’s iCloud you can start to understand the scale of how useful Blockai can be and that’s just digital photos," investor Ron Williams told CoinDesk. Pricing tiers
While other startups focused on this use case are hoping to attract customers with a freemium model, Blockai has a different approach.
The startup now changes a small cost to handle the insertion of records into the bitcoin blockchain, sending payments from its wallet through to […]
