Bware Labs Raises $6M in Series a Funding Round to Boost Blockchain API Infrastructure
PRESS RELEASE. Romania, Bucharest, February 23, 2022 — Bware Labs, a startup creating a platform for decentralized API infrastructure, connecting blockchain data consumers to nodes supplied by independent providers, has raised $6 million in a follow-up funding round, bringing its total raise to $7 million.
The cap table is comprised of Hypersphere Ventures, Blizzard, Infinity Ventures Crypto, Woodstock, Figment, Axia8, Coingecko Ventures, Nexo, Connext, Kosmos Ventures, Impossible Finance, Nabais Capital, AVentures DAO, Subsquid and Stakeborg. The previous round included investors such as Spartan Group, Ascensive Assets, GBV and Morningstar Ventures, and Angels such as Danish Chaudhry (CEO FMFW.io) which also participated in the most recent round.
Bware Labs is a multichain subscription-based API platform that serves developers and businesses building on blockchain by efficiently delivering their requests to the integrated networks. The project aims to decentralize a common point of centralization and criticism of the crypto ecosystem, where most infrastructure relies on centralized node operators to interact with the blockchain. Infura is the best example of such a service on Ethereum, and while effective, it is a traditional company offering a service that is paid with fiat.
Bware Labs offers a platform that would solve the hurdles involved in getting reliable blockchain access, with the end goal of using third party node providers, while maintaining a high bar for performance and reliability, comparable or even higher than its centralized competitors. Node providers will be incentivised for the first time through the platform, by getting a share of the platform revenues as well as the possibility to stake BWR tokens and get rewards, while the users will benefit from a high quality service achieved due to geographical node distribution thus ensuring viable data streams available via WebSocket, RPC or traditional HTTP REST protocols depending on the supported chain. Subscription payments will be made in stablecoin, simplifying the process for crypto-native businesses.
Aside from their share from subscription revenue which will be distributed based on a performance score, the node providers will have the option to stake BWR tokens to increase the rewards they receive. They can also accept delegations from other BWR token owners, to reach the minimum required for the staking pools to become active. This will ensure all BWR token holders can benefit from the utilization of the platform. On the other hand, third-party nodes will have to comply to strict reliability, performance and data integrity requirements, which will be monitored and enforced via an integrity protocol developed by Bware Labs. Failure to meet the requirements by underperforming nodes will result in jailing and halting all rewards for the owner, until the situation is remedied for the troubled node.
The Bware Labs platform, currently functioning with centralized infrastructure maintained by Bware Labs, offers users the opportunity to create blockchain endpoints for free, to be used for all their API needs. The blockchains currently supported are Avalanche, Binance Smart Chain, Moonbeam, Moonriver, Astar, Shiden, Fantom, Polkadot, Elrond and Polygon. As this service is not charged, there is a rate-limit enforced and users can only create one endpoint for ech blockchain. Layer2 platforms like Optimism and Arbitrum are under consideration to be added to the platform in the following months.
The next important milestones for the near future include a full fledged release of the API Platform, containing a Payment Module with various subscription plans that will cover all development needs (varying rate limits and numbers of endpoints). Following the platform launch, the focus will shift onto decentralization and the company will launch its proprietary integrity protocol starting with an incentivised testnet phase followed by the full release of node provider on-boarding experience and staking/delegation functionalities.
“We are very excited to have finalized this investment round, for two main reasons: One is about the strength we brought into our team, by on-boarding experienced investors, from both crypto and traditional finance, big tech projects and fellow infrastructure players. The other reason is related to our company’s growth and the expansion of our tech offering which can now happen at an accelerated pace due to the financing we were able to secure and the support of our investors. Of course, the vote of confidence received from new and repeated investors from our seed round, less than 10 months ago, are also bringing much pride to our team. We are now able to scale our plans for the years to come.” — Flavian Manea, CEO of Bware Labs.
“Hypersphere is excited to partner with Bware Labs on this opportunity. The team’s expertise and vision will enable builders to focus on developing multi-chain applications while eliminating much of the costly infrastructure overhead. Bware has built a strong team of experts who are capable of meeting the requirements of today’s projects while simultaneously scaling to meet the needs of future chains and customers.” — Brian Weaver, Engineering Manager at Hypersphere.
“Bware Labs is playing a key role in expanding and hardening the infrastructure available to builders across the Avalanche community,” said Lydia Chiu, Vice President of Business Development at Ava Labs, on behalf of Blizzard. “We look forward to seeing its team and technology take the next leap forward.”
About Bware Labs
Bware Labs has developed a state-of-the-art API platform serving both API users and node-owners: Users can generate endpoints on multiple blockchains, to use for all API calls. Node providers are rewarded for exposing their node APIs, on the condition that they meet performance, reliability and data integrity standards, aimed at ensuring the quality of service.
Contacts:
Name: Anca Chirila
Position: COO
Email: anca@bwarelabs.com
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