Bison trails raises $25.5 million series A round

Bison Trails, a New York based blockchain infrastructure-as-a-service startup, announced today that it raised $25.5 million in a series A. The round was led by Blockchain Capital with participation from Kleiner Perkins, Coinbase, Consensys and Galaxy Digital, among others. The round follows Bison Trails’ $5.3 million raise last November, bringing its total funding to date to $31 million. According to Joe Lallouz, CEO of Bison Trails, the company plans to use the proceeds of the fundraise to expand its offerings as well as to develop a new network roadmap for several projects, including Libra, Telegram, Skale and Polkadot.

Why it matters:

• It’s been a hot week of funding for cryptocurrency startups. The round follows recent announcements of Compound’s $25 million Series A led by a16z crypto and Messari’s $4 million raise led by Uncork Capital.
• Bison Trails is one of the 21 founding members of the Libra Association. According to Lallouz, Bison Trails is actively working with founding members to move the Libra project forward, from testnet to mainnet launch.
• Bison Trails is one of the few startups that exists in contrast to staking-as-a-service providers that risk centralizing blockchain validation and governance with large organizations like exchanges. Bison Trails makes it easy for clients to run node infrastructure on the proof-of-stake networks they support without exposing clients’ private keys or having access to moving tokens.