Bison Trails, a blockchain protocol provider has secured a $25.5 million Series in A funding round led by Blockchain Capital to improve the firm’s infrastructure services. ConsenSys, Coinbase Ventures, A Capital, Kleiner Perkins, Collaborative Fund, and Sound Ventures entered the latest round as new investors, while early backers, like Galaxy Digital and Initialized, made follow-up investments after a $5.25 million seed round in March.  

The Series A round came after the startup was included as one of the 21 founding members for Facebook’s Libra Association in October, boosting its reputation as a global infrastructure service provider, CEO Joe Lallouz said in an interview. “As the only blockchain infrastructure firm in the Libra project, we will contribute in building the new system with Facebook,” Lallouz said, adding that it was the technology giant that approached Bison Trails earlier in the year for the role on the founding team.

Formed in 2018, the New York-based startup uses its customs to help customers deploy the participation nodes on any blockchain, without having to develop their security,  infrastructure, and protocol engineering competencies. “We have become the simplest way to run infrastructure on various blockchains and helped other protocols, companies, and builders launch and manage distributed nodes on the blockchain network,” Lallouz said, remarking the firm now serves more than 20 protocol projects. 

Bison Trails’ investors said they were speculating on the increasing efficiency of the company’s infrastructure services. Kleiner Perkins investing partner Monica Desai said  Bison Trails recognized early that node infrastructure would become a bottleneck to blockchain adoption, which is why they built a decentralized, user-friendly solution. 

 Emilie Choi chief operating officer at Coinbase Ventures said crypto networks would continue to move towards active network participation models such as staking, signaling, voting, further strengthening the need for solutions similar to those that Bison Trails provides. 

Nervos completed its $72 million token sales. They provide infrastructure for companies to build their projects on the chain, while the Interchain Foundation has dedicated resources to developing its Inter-Blockchain Communication protocol. 

Lallouz said the equity raise, rather than a token sale, keep its interests in line with those of its consumers.”Without our blockchain or tokens, we can better concentrate on extending the secured and scalable infrastructure layer for any blockchain platform with the new funding.” Lallouz said.