By Gertrude Chavez-Dreyfuss
NEW YORK (Reuters) – Some of Asia’s largest venture capital firms and crypto hedge funds will invest $ 100 million to develop even more applications on a new blockchain called Assembly under the IOTA network, said co-founder Dominik Schiener to Reuters in an interview.
IOTA is a blockchain-like distributed ledger network.
The assembly will focus on decentralized finance (DeFI), non-fungible tokens (NFT) and cryptocurrency gaming, Schiener said.
DeFi projects, which facilitate cryptocurrency-denominated loans outside of traditional banking, and NFTs, which are certified unique and non-tradable digital assets, are two of the fastest growing crypto sectors. Many blockchain companies around the world have rotated to serve this space and meet the growing demand.
Assembly, a smart contract network similar to the Ethereum blockchain launched by the Berlin-based research and engineering group IOTA Foundation last month, will serve as the anchor for DeFi, NFT and gaming applications. Smart contracts are self-executing transactions whose results depend on pre-programmed inputs.
Asian investment firms led by LD Capital, Signum Capital, Huobi Ventures, UOB Venture Management, HyperChain Capital and Du Capital have committed $ 100 million to finance developments in the Assembly network, Schiener said. Crypto market maker GSR will also contribute to the $ 100 million investment, he added.
All investors confirmed their investment in emails and statements to Reuters.
These companies also participated in seed funding earlier this year that raised $ 18 million for the Assembly.
“Assembly is now its own network built on top of IOTA and allows anyone to create their own blockchain network. And this blockchain network is considered secure and is connected through IOTA,” said Schiener.
“You can think of Assembly as a network of networks, where there are many blockchains that are now being secured and connected through the same architecture,” he added.
The beta or trial version of Assembly is now available, said Schiener, which will officially launch next year with its own token. Assembly developers, creators and early contributors will be rewarded with close to 70% of the total token supply.
(Reporting by Gertrude Chavez-Dreyfuss; Edited by Alden Bentley and Chizu Nomiyama)
Copyright 2021 Thomson Reuters.
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