It was announced yesterday that smart contract platform Agoric received an investment from Ripple incubator Xpring. Agoric is developing a secure distributed ocap platform for smart contracts and market-oriented programming. The platform supports the development of smart contracts and market institutions across many different scales, from large public blockchains to small two-party contracts.
The ocap platform consists of: a robust architecture for building secure smart contracts; foundation in JavaScript for maximum reach; cryptographic routing fabric for inter-chain interoperability; a library of market abstractions and a framework for securely composing them; and framework for secure user interaction.
“At Xpring we believe the future is interoperable. Data, value, and computation will be capable of moving cross-chain and applications will need to be supported by interoperable infrastructure. We are actively making investments in this future, which is why we are excited to announce that we have invested in Agoric. The smart contracts market is growing and Agoric is well-positioned to reach a broader market. Agoric enables developers to safely build secure smart contracts and new digital assets that can connect to public and private blockchains. They are focused on creating an interoperable smart contracts platform that is accessible to mainstream developers. As members of the JavaScript standards committee, the Agoric team created subsets of JavaScript SES and Jessie. Native JavaScript developers will be able to build Agoric smart contracts in an accessible language.”
The Agoric team includes Mark S. Miller, a smart contracts expert and leader, Dean Tribble, Mike Jablon, Kate Sills, and Brian Warner. The experienced Agoric team has been deeply involved in the development of smart contracts, from initial discussions in the early 90s to Brian Warner’s involvement in the prescient Least Authority security audit of Ethereum. Realizing that a world of smart contracts would not be possible without better software, the Agoric team has been actively creating the right environment for crypto-commerce.
This is the sixth publicly known investment so far this year for Ripple incubator Xpring, the first three coming back in February with the announcements of investment in Dharma, Interledger solutions provider Kava, and Wietse Wind’s XRPL Labs. Xpring also invested in Forte back in March, and most recently Bolt Labs.