DePIN project Blockless raises $8 million in pre-seed and seed funding rounds

Blockless, a decentralized physical infrastructure network (DePIN) project focused on providing computing power support, announced raising $8 million in pre-seed and seed funding rounds.

NGC Ventures led the pre-seed round worth $3 million, and M31 Capital and Frachtis (a new fund formed by Xavier Meegan, chief investment officer of staking firm Chorus One) co-led the seed round worth $5 million, Blockless said Tuesday. Other investors in the two rounds included No Limit Holdings, MH Ventures, Interop Ventures and Plassa Capital, Blockless said.

The project closed the pre-seed round in March 2022 but is disclosing it now, along with the seed round, co-founder Butian Li, formerly an investor at NGC Ventures, told The Block. The latest seed round began in February and closed in April, Li said. Both rounds were structured as a simple agreement for future equity (SAFE), with token warrants in a 1:1 ratio, Li added. She declined to comment on the valuation but said the terms of both rounds were "similar."

What is Blockless?

Blockless is a DePIN project that aims to enable users to automatically provide computing power to their applications via its network.

"Users don't have to run a special node or download any software," Li said. "Blockless has created a WebAssembly (WASM) application framework that features a 'nestled node' embedded in the application, meaning that when users open an application, they will automatically be providing compute resources to that particular application through the Blockless network."

Blockless is inspired by a "matchmaking service," Li said, giving an example of how, as Uber connects drivers to users, Blockless aims to connect applications with users to fulfill their computational power needs via its network. Users will then be rewarded by those applications and Blockless, Li said.

Blockless network and token launch

Blockless was co-founded in 2022 by Li, Derek Anderson (formerly of Akash Network AKT +4.61% ), Michael Chen (formerly of Binance), and Liam Zhang (formerly a researcher at New York University).

Li said the project plans to launch its testnet in the coming weeks, and its mainnet and native token, dubbed BLESS, are expected to launch in the third quarter of this year. Blockless is using the Cosmos SDK to create its native network and native token, Li added.

Blockless's core team is based in Palo Alto, California. Its total headcount is ten people, and Li plans to hire more staff in engineering, product, and ecosystem functions.

Blockless's competitors include projects like io.net and Fluence Network, Li said. In March, io.net developer raised $30 million in Series A funding and reached a token valuation of $1 billion, as The Block reported at the time.