Blockchain startup Concordium has completed an oversubscribed round of funding and finalized its minimum viable product (MVP) testnet. The new public permissionless blockchain targets enterprises with privacy-centric features. It has raised $15 million through a token sale to fund further development.
News of the raise comes just a few weeks after the announcement of a partnership with Geely, which owns Volvo and is the largest Daimler shareholder.
Concordium is Chairman Lars Seier Christensen’s brainchild, who founded and backed the organization with a group of business angels and team members. Seier Christensen is known for co-founding online trading and investment platform Saxo Bank in 1992.
CEO of Concordium Lone Fønss Schrøder, who is also the Vice-Chairman of Volvo Cars, said of the raise: “The interest of the community, particularly among RustLang developers, has been amazing to witness. Concordium has fielded strong demand from DeFi projects looking to build on a blockchain with ID at the protocol level.”
While Concordium has strong privacy features, it aims to enable regulators to unmask identities if required. If regulators start taking more interest in DeFi projects, it might provide a way forward.
The latest version of Concordium’s testnet saw 2,300 self-sovereign identities and more than 7,000 accounts created. Test smart contract deployments included gaming, crowdfunding, time-stamping and voting.
The company’s scientific team includes renowned researchers responsible for core concepts widely used in cryptography, including Chief Technology Officer Dr. Torben Pedersen and Professor Ivan Damgård, co-founder of the cryptographic hash function the Merkel-Damgård construction.
Concordium is on course for a mainnet launch in Q2 this year, and plans to announce its post-mainnet roadmap this week.
While the Concordium blockchain is targeting the enterprise market, it’s not alone. It’s up against the leading permissioned enterprise blockchain protocols such as Corda, Hyperledger Fabric and Quorum. In terms of permissionless apart from Ethereum, there’s Hedera Hashgraph, Polkadot, DFinity, EOS, Cardano, Tezos and Avalanche, which are all interested in getting more enterprises on board. And they also have a head start. Concordium’s big advantage is the Geely relationship. However, they were not mentioned as an investor in today’s announcement.