A Crucial Piece of Missing Infrastructure: Why We’re Investing in Blocknative

As the oldest venture firm dedicated to investing in the blockchain industry, at Blockchain Capital we’re always thrilled to find phenomenal early-stage companies that are building solutions at the frontier of our industry and tackling the universal problems that users of open blockchain networks will encounter over the coming years.

Transaction settlement is one such challenge: There is an increasing number of transactions competing for finite block space on open networks like Ethereum and Bitcoin. Moreover, as the value of these transactions continues to grow, the competition for that finite block space is escalating rapidly. All of which means that the process for transaction settlement is increasingly competitive and that in-flight transactions face a new range of risks for timely and efficient settlement.

To be clear, this is a feature — not a bug — of open blockchain networks: The surge in transaction volume is a byproduct of the fact that anyone in the world can connect to these networks and broadcast transactions. This feature is empowering and democratizes access to financial networks — and it presents a UX challenge for timely and efficient transaction settlement.

This problem will become even more pronounced as crypto scales from ~100 million users to more than 1 billion over the next few years and it needs a dedicated solution. Fortunately, it’s a challenge that can be solved with big infrastructure and deep data.

That’s why we’re excited to lead Blocknative’s seed round and why I’m joining the Board of Directors. Blocknative is the first company focused on building a crucial piece of missing infrastructure for in-flight transactions — their global data platform captures thousands of mempool events every second and Blocknative is leveraging this first-mover advantage to provide unrivaled transparency to transaction settlement.

As the value transacted over open blockchain networks grows several-fold in the next few years, Blocknative’s solutions will become imperative to crypto-native builders, protocols, and traders as well as the next wave of fintech companies, payment networks, and financial institutions that are embracing crypto. This emerging opportunity is large and rapidly expanding.

Hundreds of companies, teams and individuals have already deployed Blocknative solutions in production and traction is accelerating rapidly with double-digit month-over-month growth. This is only the beginning of their journey along a much larger growth trajectory.

Blocknative is led by co-founder and CEO, Matt Cutler, alongside co-founder and CTO, Chris Meisl. Together, Matt and Chris have extensive experience building at the frontier of technology, scaling early-stage companies, and building to successful outcomes — including an IPO and acquisition by Cisco.

At the end of the day, a blockchain transaction should feel seamless for users — and that’s exactly what Blocknative’s platform is enabling.