tokenist.com
Nischal Shetty, the co-founder of the embattled Indian cryptocurrency exchange WazirX, is reportedly negotiating to raise the first funding round for a new startup, according to TechCrunch. The report says Shetty is looking to secure a funding round that could value his new venture at roughly $200 million.
Shetty’s New Startup on a Mission to Solve the Blockchain Trilemma
Mumbai-based crypto exchange WazirX’s co-founder Nischal Shetty is reportedly looking to secure fresh funding for his new blockchain startup, TechCrunch reports. According to the report, the maiden financing round could value the startup, Shardeum, at around $200 million.
Investors participating in the funding round include The Spartan Group, Struck Crypto, Big Brain Holdings, and Cogitent Ventures, among others. The report says Shetty is currently raising around $20 million to $30 million in a seed funding round for Shardeum.
“We are currently working with top VCs in an ongoing funding round. While it has not yet closed, we expect to see great support for Shardeum and our mission of making blockchain technology faster, smarter, and easier to use for everyone.”
– Nischal Shetty
Shardeum is on a mission to tackle one of the key issues most blockchains face which forces them to prioritize two of three key properties including scalability, security, and decentralization. According to Shardeum’s investor deck, the startup is utilizing a technique known as sharding that divides the network into shards, allowing it to handle more transactions, validated and verified in parallel.
Shardeum also seeks to be EVM-compatible and employ proof-of-stake (PoS) and proof-of-quorum (PoQ) models to reduce the network’s costs and rely on three key node types – validator, standby, and archival – the investor deck explains. The startup expects to be able to handle more than 100,000 transactions per second with 100,000 nodes and a latency of 10 seconds.
Shardeum also plans to help Ethereum developers shift to Shardeum and maintain stable gas fees, it said. Shetty added the startup will share additional details on how it plans to “turbocharge the expansion of our team and accelerate Web3 adoption for developers and their users.”
WazirX and Binance
Nischal Shatty is best known as a co-founder of the troubled Indian crypto exchange WazirX. Earlier this month, India’s financial watchdog froze more than $8 million in assets belonging to WazirX, due to a potential breach of foreign exchange regulations.
WazirX was initially believed to be a business owned by Binance, but the crypto exchange’s CEO Changpeng Zhao denied the rumors, saying the transaction to acquire WazirX was never completed. Binance halted off-chain fund transactions with WazirX following the investigation into its activities.
India’s regulators have been cracking down on local crypto exchanges lately, mainly for aiding foreign firms in money laundering activities. Earlier this month, the regulators raided two more crypto exchanges, Bitbns and Vauld, and froze their assets.