InfStones is among a crop of firms aiming to become the AWS of Web 3.
Blockchain infrastructure provider InfStones, which aims to serve as a flexible Amazon Web Services–like platform for Web 3 development, has closed a $33 million Series B funding round from a group of investors that included Susquehanna International Group (SIG) and Dragonfly Capital. No valuation was provided, with the round bringing the company’s total funding up to $45 million.
Other investors in the round included Qiming Venture Partners, DHVC, A&T and Value Internet Fund.
Founded in 2018 with offices in Beijing, the United States and Canada, InfStones plans to use the funding to expand operations in Asia, Europe and South America. The company will also triple its team from 30 to 90 employees over the next year, and expand support to more than 100 blockchains and protocols, up from more than 50 currently.
InfStones has been profitable since 2018, CEO Zhenwu Shi told CoinDesk in an interview. The purpose of the fundraising is to build out the ecosystem and network of collaborators. Current InfStones customers include crypto exchange Binance and analytics firm Dune Analytics.
The InfStones platform provides easy access to protocol consensus and proof-of-stake staking benefits. Users can run validator nodes, access on-chain data and build decentralized applications across multiple chains. The platform-as-a-service supports tens of thousands of nodes on blockchains including BNB Chain, Cardano, Chainlink, Ethereum, Polkadot, Polygon and Solana.
“A lot of blockchains want to become more decentralized, which requires more people to launch a node in their ecosystem. But those people don’t have a technology background and don’t know how to maintain those nodes,” said Shi. “Using our product, they can very easily launch and participate in the blockchain network.”
InfStones has also launched a new front-end user interface that lets clients easily deploy nodes within minutes. The public application programming interface (API) can deploy nodes for BNB Chain, BSC Archival Data, Ethereum, and NEO with support for Cosmos and other chains coming soon.
“Just as AWS has made it easy for companies to deploy applications across servers, storage, and databases, InfStones is making it simple to deploy nodes, APIs, and other services,” said Dragonfly Capital Partner Tom Schmidt in a press release. “Their platform helps reduce the barriers to entry for new companies that are looking to incorporate blockchain technology into their stack.”
Other firms vying for the same crown are also raising lofty sums. Both Blockdaemon and Alchemy have raised hundreds of millions of dollars in recent weeks.