Sequoia China, Polychain Lead Blockchain Startup's $28 Million Round

Blockchain startup Nervos Network has announced the completion of a $28 million Series A funding round.

The company said on Wednesday that major investors in the round included token-focused hedge fund Polychain and venture capital firm Sequoia China, as well as several China-based blockchain startups like wallet services Bixin and imToken.

The new financing will be put to use expanding Nervos' product and engineering team with the aim of speeding up the development of its own enterprise blockchain infrastructure, the firm said.

Co-founded by Jan Xie, a former ethereum foundation developer who authored the Ruby implementation, the startup aims to create its own public blockchain network, also called Nervos.

Taking a hybrid approach that combines a public blockchain with another layer of what it calls an "application chain," Nervos claims the system will resolve the common blockchain issues of scalability and security simultaneously.

The approach is meant to allow companies to develop decentralized applications on top of a secure public network, but run them in the application chain layer – removing the need for enterprises to commit "their entire tech stack to the blockchain."

Xie said in the announcement:

"While there are undeniable benefits for enterprises that utilize blockchain technology to innovate and improve existing systems, enterprise adoption has been held back by a host of challenges like scalability, security, and complexity."

The new funding also marks the latest investment move by Sequoia China in the blockchain industry, following recent reports of the venture capital firm's participation in bitcoin mining giant Bitmain's Series B round funding.

Earlier this year, Polychain also invested in a Swiss blockchain startup's $61 million funding round with venture capital giant Andreessen Horowitz. DFINITY Stiftung said the funding would go toward development of its protocol, aimed to support a public decentralized cloud computing platform.

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