UPDATED 08:20 EDT / FEBRUARY 03 2023

BLOCKCHAIN

BlockJoy ‘nodes-as-a-service’ provider for Web3 raises nearly $11M in funding

BlockJoy Inc., a Web3 infrastructure company that develops node management solutions for blockchain providers, announced Thursday that it has raised nearly $11 million to reduce operating costs for providers.

The company said that it raised the money across combined seed and Series A funding rounds from Gradient Ventures, Draper Dragon, Dragon Roark, Active Capital, Borderless HNT and Renegade Ventures, among others.

The company builds a white-label blockchain “nodes-as-a-service” management product for node-hosting enterprise customers that is far less expensive than traditional cloud-based solutions. According to the company, its solution can deliver a cloudlike experience and reduce operating costs by up to 80%.

The function of a blockchain node is to assist with securing the decentralized network. Depending on the protocol, a node can determine whether a transaction is valid and accept or reject it, add it to the distributed ledger and broadcast the transaction history to other nodes. Nodes themselves are fundamental to maintaining the decentralized nature of blockchains and the more nodes that exist, the more robust the network.

To simplify running nodes, enterprise node hosting services often run the software that maintains them on cloud services such as Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure. Both of these providers offer node management, but it doesn’t run directly on commodity servers. Although it can be enticing to host nodes in the cloud because it’s simple and swift to launch on these services, it’s expensive and less efficient.

“Through BlockJoy’s unique technology and our focus on blockchain-specific Web3 infrastructure, we can shrink the costs of node-running further than your typical cloud provider can,” said Chris Bruce, co-founder and chief executive of BlockJoy.

BlockJoy came about as the brainchild of Bruce and co-founder and Chief Technology Officer Sean Carey, who began the company as a staking service for friends and family. People can “stake” or lock up cryptocurrency to secure a blockchain in order to earn rewards.

The project took root quickly and the founders began to use the platform to run nodes for other businesses. Before founding BlockJoy, Bruce co-founded four companies and Carey co-founded Helium Inc., an “internet of things” blockchain network with a $1.2 billion valuation.

From their experience, Bruce and Carey discovered that most people find it difficult to run their own validator node. On top of that, cloud-based nodes could be two to three times more expensive than running nodes on bare metal. That meant constructing purpose-built infrastructure for Web3 could allow any company or person to deploy and manage their own nodes, potentially a major market.

“As the first and only platform that is purpose-built for running blockchain nodes on infrastructure designed for Web3, BlockJoy helps enterprises to deploy and run blockchain nodes on any infrastructure, anywhere in the world, on commodity bare-metal servers,” said Bruce.

The company currently supports a number of notable crypto companies as customers, including Helium, Indodax, Seeed Studio and Gate.io, plus the exchanges Binance and Crypto.com. The company is launching its beta today with support for Ethereum and Helium. And it has a planned production launch with nearly 30 supported protocols after the public beta in the coming weeks.

The company said that it will use the funds to support the continued development and launch of BlockVisor, the company’s patented node management software, which is currently available for beta signups.

Image: TheDigitalArtist/Pixabay

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