Bundlr Network Raises $5.2 Million Seed Round
Less than a year ago, Bundlr Network, a decentralized platform that makes it fast and easy to store data on web3, was launched on Arweave.
Today, Bundlr is announcing its $5.2 million seed round.
How Bundlr Network started
Bundlr was founded in April 2021 after CEO and founder, Josh Benaron, had a phone call with the founder and CEO of Arweave, Sam Williams.
Sam explained that in just a few months, the blocks on Arweave would be full, slowing transaction speeds to an extremely low rate. The result would be similar to what users on Ethereum were experiencing: high fees and slow transactions.
Josh had an idea that could solve this problem and as a result, created Bundlr Network, a decentralized platform that makes it fast and easy to store data on web3. It is a reliable, multichain solution that enables easy access to Arweave.
Where we are today
To say Bundlr made a splash in the permaweb ecosystem would be an understatement. It’s a tsunami.
Since the launch of our technology, Bundlr has integrated with leading blockchains and Layer 2's.
It is trusted by leading web3 projects
Bundlr has also achieved some incredible milestones:
- 200+ million transactions
- Increases upload speeds to Arweave by ~3000%
- Currently processing between 90% — 98% of data uploaded to Arweave
- Data uploaded to Arweave has increased by over 450% since Bundlr’s launch
Numbers and partnerships aside, we’ve been educating people on the importance of data permanency. It’s not just a “nice to have,” it’s something we need to fight against censorship, preserve our history, and protect our digital assets, especially NFTs.
We’ve also been working with Arweave to preserve important historical data with a focus on traditionally censored areas. We developed ARchiver, a suite of tools so anyone can permanently archive tweets and articles that they believe are important and should be protected.
Where we’re going
We’re only getting started.
While we have a lot in the works, for the immediate future we have a few of things we want to focus on:
- Protecting investments in NFTs
Imagine 50 years from now looking back on NFTs you bought in the heyday of web3 only to find that the metadata had been deleted and your NFT is gone.
This is not only possible, but probable.
Contrary to popular belief, NFT’s digital assets, metadata, and code are not always stored on their native blockchain but on centralized servers and other non-permanent solutions such as IPFS. This means that if the company in charge of paying the monthly storage fees goes under or stops paying, that data will get deleted.
This is a huge risk for creators, developers, and collectors.
Storing your NFTs on a non-permanent solution would be like storing a rare wine collection in a hot, humid greenhouse. It’s just a bad idea.
We want to protect the investment people have made in NFTs by permanently storing them onto Arweave via Bundlr.
2. Educating people and companies about the importance of data permanence and decentralization
Data is an invaluable asset and yet, many do not think twice about where their data is stored.
We’ve all experienced dead links, corrupted photos, and lost digital documents, and yet we still use non-permanent data storage solutions.
We want to change this.
Today developers can choose from a variety of services when building their applications, which primarily include AWS, IPFS, and Arweave. The difference between these solutions are big, and how you choose to store your data is extremely important.
A centralized solution such as AWS is non-permanent, prone to attacks (both physical and digital), and is owned by a singular entity. Since your data is store in a central location, it puts your data at risk of hacks, manipulation, and outages. Since it is owned by a single entity it’s possible for a company to deny access to your accounts or change permissions to make it more difficult to make account changes.
A non-permanent decentralized solution such as IPFS puts your data at risk of being deleted. While there are ways to protect your data, you must pay monthly. If you or a platform holding your data does not, it will be deleted.
Arweave is the only decentralized solution that permanently stores your data for a one-time fee. It is a long term solution for all data needs.
3. Continue to preserve our world’s history on Arweave via Bundlr
We continue to work with Arweave archiving historical data from places that are traditionally censored including Russia and China. We will also continue empowering users to join us and permanently store pieces of data that they believe is important.
Every time something or someone is censored, we lose a bit of our history. This is one of the reasons permanent data storage is so important. Once a piece of media or any type of data is stored on Arweave, it cannot be lost or altered.
We want to preserve our history so future historians can have a robust view of our world. We want all voices to be heard and reflected for future generations to learn from.
Our series seed raise
Bundlr Network has raised a $5.2 million seed round. The round was led by leading web3 investors including Hypersphere Ventures, arweave.org, Permanent Ventures, and Framework. Other investors included OpenSea Ventures and Race Capital.
We are proud to have such an incredible group of investors who understand the importance of data permanency and can support us as we continue to grow.
We are excited to embark on the next stage of growth. There are so many exciting announcements, products, partnerships, and more that we are eager to share with you in the coming months.
A huge thank you to our investors, team, and community. LFG! 🚀
If you’re interested in learning more about Bundlr Network, take a look at our documents or engage with developers on Discord. To stay up to date on news, follow us on Twitter and on Medium.
To get in touch with us, please email caylin@bundlr.network
