A startup seeking to scale blockchain for enterprise use has raised €3m ($3.37m) in venture capital to do for databases what bitcoin’s blockchain did for ledgers. Led by Earlybird Ventures and featuring participation from Anthemis Group, RWE Ventures, innogy SE and Digital Currency Group, BigchainDB ‘s Series A round is intended to help expand the company’s staff and bolster its security. Whereas traditional databases are centrally controlled, BigchainDB is working to build a database that has "blockchain characteristics" and that is owned by its users. BigchainDB’s co-founder and CEO Bruce Pon told CoinDesk: "Blockchain is a way to give access to assets equally. You’re still going to need intermediaries, but the access is equalized. They will never own your data like Google or Apple or Amazon." The company currently employs 15 people at its Berlin headquarters, and will hire three new developers and a business development manager with the additional capital. To date, most of the firm’s existing revenue comes from one- to two-day consulting sessions and proof-of-concept builds with third-party companies, but ultimately, it hopes to generate revenue selling software licenses. With the Series A raise, BigchainDB also cements a pivot that began shortly after it originally raised $2m in funding for an intellectual property product called Ascribe in early 2015. Since then, the company has rebranded, and though it still offers its Ascribe product for legacy users, no work is being done on the platform. Still, Pon said Ascribe was an important stepping stone for the company, as it was its issues scaling the platform on the bitcoin blockchain that led the firm to search for a more scalable distributed ledger. ‘Blockchain-ifying’ Po describes the work his company has done since with its clients as "starting with existing database infrastructure and blockchainifying it." In the case of […]
