[PRESS RELEASE – Boston, MA, 2nd February 2023]
Helium co-founder and early founding team member launched the whitelabel blockchain contract-as-a-service startup to reduce operational costs by up to 80 percent for companies running nodes for staking and APIs as a service.
BlockJoy is building the Web3 version of AWS on a decentralized infrastructure, while providing a cloud-like experience.
The company’s patented technology provides customers with a simple point-and-click user interface (UI) to run blockchains on any infrastructure.
BlockJoy, the company that provides blockchain whitelabel contract as a service to contract hosting companies, today announced the successful closing of nearly $11 million in Seed + Series A joint funding from Gradient Ventures, Draper Dragon, Dragon Roark, Active Capital, Borderless HNT, and Renegade Ventures. , among others. The funding will be used to support the launch of BlockVisor, the company’s proprietary node management software, which is now open for beta registrations. BlockJoy enables customers to deploy and run decentralized blockchain nodes on any infrastructure while maintaining a cloud-like experience while reducing costs by up to 80 percent from traditional cloud providers.
Created to combat the lack of proper decentralized infrastructure for blockchain networks, BlockJoy offers a node management solution that is two to three times cheaper than traditional cloud providers. Companies can deploy and manage blockchains, nodes, validators, and ETLs (extract, transform, and load) at the click of a button anywhere in the world.
BlockJoy started as a venture capital for friends and family of CEO Chris Bruce and CTO Sean Curry. However, the project quickly took off when the founders started leveraging their platform to run nodes for companies. Prior to founding BlockJoy, Bruce was a member of the founding team of four venture-backed companies with exits, including Lumeo, Diversion, Sproutling (acquired by Mattel), and Rupture (acquired by Electronic Arts). Carey co-founded Helium with a valuation of $1.2 billion and expanded popular GIF sharing and creation site GIPHY from millions of requests per day to billions per day.
“Through BlockJoy’s unique technology and our focus on the Web3 blockchain infrastructure, we are able to further reduce the cost of running nodes than your typical cloud provider can,” said Chris Bruce, Co-Founder and CEO of BlockJoy. “We’re giving our customers the ability to run their own servers in any data center, just like it was back in the Web 1.0 days, but without the hassle.”
In addition, BlockJoy has developed technologies that allow companies to support new protocols in a matter of weeks instead of the usual four to six months.
As evidenced by the collapse of the cryptocurrency exchange FTX in early November, the current centralized models of online exchanges do not protect customers. BlockJoy offers customers a more decentralized approach to operating their Web3 infrastructure. Customers have complete control over where they deploy their infrastructure without being locked into expensive cloud services.
“Since switching to BlockJoy, we can now run our API nodes from legacy cloud providers and expect to save over 60% on our operating costs,” said Mark Nigdam, Chief Technology Officer, Nova Labs. “This partnership has also saved our team hundreds of hours a month by not having to deal with daily fires. The cost and time savings have already made a huge difference to our business, and we are excited to see how far this partnership will take us.”
In addition to freeing customers from these hurdles, BlockJoy supports contract operators. Today’s leading enterprise node operators, including Blockdaemon, Bison Trails, QuickNode, and Alchemy, will begin to see pricing pressures from increasing competition in the market. BlockJoy’s decentralized approach can greatly benefit companies like this, as the solution significantly reduces operating costs and simplifies the time it takes to support new chains.
“We are at an inflection point with blockchain technology. Investing in developing its infrastructure is more important than ever because it will pave the way for the entire industry,” says Anna Patterson, Managing Partner at Gradient Ventures. “We believe that BlockJoy has a chance to become indispensable to the Web3 economy and we Excited to support Chris, Sean and their team.”
Six months after launch, BlockJoy has run 1,200 helium network validators, with a cost efficiency of 80 percent. Besides Helium, BlockJoy clients include Binance, Crypto.com, Indodax, Seeed Studio, and Gate.io. BlockJoy is rapidly launching with new chains including Ethereum 2, Cosmos, Polygon, Solana, Algorand, and Avalanche. By the end of its first test run, BlockJoy will have full push-button support for 25 blockchains including those built on top of so-called Layer 0 chains.
To learn more about BlockJoy and to sign up for the beta, visit: https://blockjoy.com/
About BlockJoy
Headquartered in Boston, Massachusetts, BlockJoy helps companies reduce the cost of running nodes by up to 80 percent. Leveraging the company’s node management software, BlockJoy allows customers to deploy and run blockchain nodes on any infrastructure in the world in a more decentralized manner.
After BlockJoy received $11 million from Gradient Ventures, Draper Dragon to launch decentralized Blockchain operations debuted on CryptoPotato.