Venture capitalist Tim Draper invested $1.25 million into a bitcoin-only payments processing startup called OpenNode. The seed round for OpenNode was announced on Tuesday, in which it stated to CoinDesk that the raised funds will go towards expanding its team and improving its legal and compliance efforts.
OpenNode taps the lightning network, which CoinDesk describes as “a transacting layer on top of bitcoin,” which is being developed in hopes of faster and cheaper transactions that are capable of net-settling to the bitcoin blockchain. According to the firm, it processes “instant” and “risk-free” bitcoin payments for businesses, generating revenue by only charging one percent for transactions.
Since the start of its platform, the capacity of the lightning network increased over 15,000 percent to 456 BTC.
“We’ll continue to tackle new emerging markets where the lightning network can cut costs, promote creative payment models, and refine the current user experience with payments,” an OpenNode spokesperson told CoinDesk.
Draper also participated in a total $760,000 investment round of bitcoin payroll startup Bitwage in 2015, in addition to a smart contract trading platform called Mirror’s $8.8 million Series A financing in the same year.