New York blockchain business ConsenSys acquires Fluidity

After a joint venture between the two companies, ConsenSys has acquired the team and technology behind Brooklyn blockchain start-up Fluidity.

On Friday (22 May), New York-headquartered blockchain start-up ConsenSys announced that acquired the team and technology of its joint venture partner, Fluidity, which is a Brooklyn based blockchain technology company.

ConsenSys, which has an office in Dublin with roughly 50 employees, was founded in 2014 by Joseph Lubin. The blockchain business did not reveal the financial terms of its latest acquisition.

In a statement, the acquiring firm explained that Fluidity is the primary developer of AirSwap, which enables peer-to-peer trading on the Ethereum blockchain. AirSwap was founded as a joint venture between ConsenSys and Fluidity in 2017.

Besides working on AirSwap, Fluidity has also produced solutions for real-estate tokenisation, tokenised securities trading and systems to pledge real collateral to decentralised credit platforms.

The acquisition

The acquiring firm said that the Fluidity team will continue to build AirSwap with the support of the acquiring company’s business development, engineering and marketing teams. Fluidity’s technology will also be leveraged by ConsenSys Codefi to power commerce and decentralised finance.

In a statement, ConsenSys said: “As part of the acquisition, the Fluidity team and its products will transition to ConsenSys. The blockchain engineers and fintech experts behind AirSwap will continue to empower the world with frictionless trade by focusing on network growth and new token mechanisms.”

Lubin, CEO of the acquiring company said that bringing Fluidity fully into ConsenSys will “unlock powerful synergeries” that the companies have identified over the past few months. The two companies have been looking at different niches that they can bring forward at scale.

“We are excited to reinvigorate the longstanding close relationship,” Lubin said. The start-up said that the acquisition signals that it is strengthening its core product suite to bring to market new innovations in financial infrastructure built on Ethereum.

Michael Oved, CEO and co-founder of Fluidity said: “The future is bright for decentralised trading, blockchain technology and upgrading legacy financial infrastructure. Together with ConsenSys, the power of our systems can be fully realised.”