Polychain Leads Blockmesh Developer Spacemesh's $15 Million Fundraise

Blockchain development startup Spacemesh has just raised $15 million in a Series A funding round led by Polychain Capital, the firm announced Wednesday.

The project is taking a novel angle on blockchain tech, working to develop a "Blockmesh operating system" using the proof-of-space-time consensus protocol.

Polychain joined MetaStable, Paradigm, Coinbase Ventures, Bain Capital, 1kx, Arrington XRP Capital, Danhua Capital, Electric Capital, Collaborative Fund, Jack Herrick and a number of other funds in contributing to the Spacemesh round, according to a press release.

Spacemesh co-founder Tomer Afek said the funds would be dedicated to growing and compensating the development team, as well as for an open-source bounty program to pay voluntary contributors.

To that end, the company is now hiring in New York City and Tel Aviv, although applicants do not necessarily need to live in either city to be hired.

At present, the team comprises 10 full-time employees.

"We are iterating on the protocols as well as the full node implementation, and [are] only going to release a mainnet and the Spacemesh programmable cryptocurrency once we have done extensive security and critical bugs audits and have published the full Spacemesh protocol and its rigorous and peer-reviewed security proofs."

This system would be less energy-intensive than proof-of-work algorithms, such as used by the bitcoin protocol, and more accessible than proof-of-stake systems, Spacemesh believes.

Spacemesh raised $3 million in seed funding back in early May. Milky Way image via Shutterstock.

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