KR1, a public fund which pursues investments in the blockchain sector today announced their latest moves. First, the company has made an investment in the Dfinity Project (Dfinity), investing GBP593,000 for a total of 191,681.85 Dfinity Network Tokens (DFN). Dfinity aims to be a blockchain supercomputer designed to host the next generation of software. The project was formed to research ways of enabling public decentralized networks to host a virtual computer of potentially unlimited capacity, whilst providing a secure, performant and flexible consensus mechanism. The concept is similar to Ethereum but promises vastly improved performance and, ultimately, unlimited capacity.
“The Dfinity Project has been fortunate to receive support from KR1. The KR1 team has been invaluable in the facilitation of events in London, and their generous capital contribution was greatly appreciated.”
Secondly, KR1 has also invested USD100,000 into the Flying Carpet Project which is managed by Air Network Ltd (Air Network). The company invested in return for a yet-to-be-determined amount of discounted Nitrogen tokens (NTN) and will also receive a separate allocation of tokens, after the public sale has concluded, in return for advisory services. Air Network is an Ethereum based communication protocol for IoT devices such as drones and automated cars. Before deployment, devices go through a programming and functionality testing phase which takes place on a virtual reality platform. Video content created of the intended flight or route of the device will then flow throughout a tokenized ecosystem, incentivizing people participate to in the network and validate the actions and intentions of the device by watching the videos. The project will bring together hardware owners who will connect their IoT devices to the Air Network, developers who will build software allowing these devices to perform tasks and lastly businesses who will use the Air Network application to access different services that require autonomous drones. Use case examples include inspecting coconut palm trees, rooftop analysis, thermal imaging for buildings and houses, transportation and biomass analysis of crops.
Next, KR1 informed on the investment of USD50,000 in Connext Inc. (Connext) through a simple agreement for future equity (SAFE) fundraising round. The investment entitles KR1 to a minimum equity stake of 1.25 percent in Connext, dependent of the valuation of Connext at the next funding round. Connext enables Ethereum projects to implement low cost, near-instant transactions for their users. Participants that set up a Connext Hub will be able to open a payment channel (state channel) with the Hub and transact with any other user that is also connected to the Hub. This will be possible without paying a network fee or needing to wait for block confirmation time. The ultimate goal is for Connext to become an open, developer-friendly, fully community-governed, network for handling two-party transactions of any sort.
Finally, KR1 has invested GBP50,000 for 10 percent of Blocksmith Ltd (Blocksmith) and has been granted an option to acquire an additional 5 percent of Blocksmith for GBP100,000, an option which is open for twelve months. Blocksmith is coming out of Whitesmith, a digital product studio that has been running for more than six years, going from idea to first product iteration with a track record in the start-up and corporate world. Blocksmith is their new offering and aims be a blockchain system development agency, leveraging their previous experience in building products to deliver new solutions to blockchain space.
“We continue to gain access to some very exciting projects early in their journey to market. All the projects listed here have brilliant teams behind them and are breaking new ground in their fields. We’ve also played a crucial role in certain projects at the very earliest stages, as our global network and experience can be of benefit. We look forward to having a closer working relationship with great projects moving forward.”