[Funding alert] Blockchain startup Arcana raises $375K from Coinbase’s Balaji Srinivasan and others

Bengaluru-based Arcana Network, the storage layer of Ethereum, with a privacy stack for DApp developers on EVM compatible chains, has raised a seed round from investors Balaji Srinivasan, former CTO of Coinbase, Sandeep Nailwal and JD Kanani, Founders of Polygon (formerly Matic), Kendrick Nguyen, Founder and CEO of Republic and other top angels in the crypto ecosystem.

The $375,000 seed fundraise also saw participation from strategic investors and some of the biggest innovators in the blockchain industry such as Santiago Santos, General Partner at ParaFi Capital, Kenetic Capital, AU21, and John Lilic; Siddharth Menon, Founder of WazirX; Tamar Menteshashvili from Solana; Aniket Jindal, Co-founder of Biconomy and Arcanum Capital.

The latest round, which was oversubscribed by 3x, is in lieu of Arcana's soon-to-be-launched XAR tokens. The funding will help Arcana accelerate its product development, acquire talent and create a vibrant developer community.

ALSO READ

Here are 6 blockchain startups to watch out for in 2021

Founded by Mayur Relekar (CEO), and Co-founders Aravindh Kumar and Abhishek Chaudhary in 2019, Arcana Network aims to be the developer-friendly decentralised storage option amongst other storage platforms such as IPFS, Filecoin, Storj, Sia, etc., and gives developers the capability to build more secure and privacy-preserving applications from the ground up.

Mayur Relekar, CEO of Arcana, believes: “Data privacy and security will be first-class citizens in every app’s stack. Privacy and ownership of data will be a necessity for every product and developers need easy-to-use tools to fulfil this. Arcana is built to be privacy-first and developer-friendly.”

Arcana is working with developers across sectors from DeFi, NFT platforms, Social Networks, and Wallets, to traditional web 2.0 products in fintech, healthcare, and enterprise SaaS, to bring privacy and security to their data.

Sandeep Nailwal, the Co-founder of Polygon (formerly Matic), said, 

“Arcana’s biggest differentiation is that it is a whole suite of privacy and data management tools that are super easy to set up. Developers can look to delegate their app’s storage and access control to Arcana and focus on their core value proposition.”

Through Arcana’s SDK, developers and businesses can protect the private, confidential, and sensitive information of their customers, employees, and business easily. The firm’s privacy stack offers decentralised services for identity and access management, end-to-end encryption, non-custodial key management, and data storage.

Aravindh Kumar, Co-founder added, “Large parts of the internet will be decentralised and every user will carry their own keys and identity while interacting with apps. With our implementation of the decentralised identifiers (DIDs) specification, we make it easy, whether it is to login, share data, protect private information, or even trade/exchange data between apps and organisations.”