Factom to be liquidated

According to a London Stock Exchange announcement, Factom, announced it would liquidate after failing to receive additional funding. FastFoward, Factom’s largest backer, is now receiver and is currently seeking to appoint a receiver to take control of Factom’s assets. A timetable for Factom’s liquidation has not been disclosed.

FastForward, is an advisory company listed on the London Stock Exchange that invests in emerging technology companies. It previously entered into a $6 million SAFE with Factom in 2018.

In its near-six-year history, Factom raised more than $18 million from investors. Factom was one of the first projects to raise money through an ICO when it raised $140,000 worth of Bitcoin in 2015, for its blockchain protocol designed to assist businesses in storing their data.

Why it matters:

• For many blockchain protocols, development is nearly entirely dependent on a company backing it. When the founding teams backing those protocols face financial difficulties, project development goes down with them.
• Factom is the latest in a series of the 2015 batch of ICOs facing difficulties. Just weeks ago, Iota finally came back online after shutting down for nearly a month following an attack on users of its Trinity wallet software.