Orchid Labs Secures $7 Mln Towards Development of Protocol to End Internet Surveillance

United States-based blockchain and software development firm Orchid Labs has raised another $7 million within its latest private offering, according to a blog post published on May 7.

Following the new raise, Orchid now has secured $43 million out of targeted funding of around $125 million, as the firm specified in a filing to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in April 2018.

In the filing, Orchid revealed that the company raised $36.1 million via a Simple Agreement for Future Tokens by that time.

Founded in 2017, Orchid is developing an open-source decentralized and surveillance-free internet protocol intending to provide anonymized internet access to the global community. The project has a particular focus on people who live in countries with excessive intrusion in browsing by the government.

In the recent announcement, Orchid noted that its mission is to create a protocol governing a “decentralized marketplace with a commodity specification for bandwidth.” Specifically, the firm stated some key elements that would be included in the marketplace, such as a second layer payment solution dubbed “Probabilistic Micropayments” and a Medallion system for bandwidth providers that provides the Ethereum (ETH) network with Sybil resistance.

In 2017, the San Francisco-based startup had previously raised $4.7 million in a separate seed funding round. The investors in that round included Andreessen Horowitz, DFJ, MetaStable, Compound, Box Group, Blockchain Capital and Sequoia Capital.

Earlier in May, Andreessen Horowitz separately raised $2.75 billion in order to launch two new crypto-related funds.