GrainChain, a Texan company focused on agricultural ledger blockchain infrastructure, announced today that it has raised $ 8.2 million in funding led by Medici Ventures Inc.
Using its innovative blockchain platform, GrainChain offers solutions to farmers, distributors, grocers and other agricultural businesses for faster payment and immediate availability of tradable products between farms and buyers.
“GrainChain has silently become one of the most successful blockchain farming platforms on the market by enabling more and more farmers to receive fair value and quick payment for their crops, while selling to a larger pool of buyers, “said Medici Ventures President Jonathan Johnson, who is also CEO of Overstock.com Inc.
This funding follows Medici Ventures’ initial investment of $ 2.5 million in GrainChain, announced in December 2018. During this round of funding, Medici Ventures was joined by Eden Block, a venture capital firm blockchain, and other investors, bringing total lifetime investment in the business. to $ 10.7 million.
Medici Ventures is a wholly owned subsidiary of Overstock and operates as a blockchain accelerator for companies in the industry. The company has invested in many blockchain companies, including Vinsent, a blockchain platform for wine futures, and financial industry startup PeerNova Inc. The company has also launched its own blockchain portfolio, Bitsy .
GrainChain co-founder and CEO Luis Macias said the funding will allow the company to “continue to develop and expand products to meet market demands in more countries.” Macias added that his company intends to create a global agricultural market, using blockchain technology to make it transparent and fair to producers.
Blockchain technology creates operational transparency by recording each transaction made on a distributed ledger that can be verified by third parties using cryptographic hashes to prove that the data has not been tampered with. At the same time, sensitive internal data remains under the control of the data producers and is protected by cryptographic keys, which means that the proprietary information remains secure.
Using the blockchain, farmers can transform crates and pallets of food into products that can be tracked by the blockchain throughout their life cycle.
The same blockchain also allows these products to be exchanged for tokens, which represent a monetary value. As a result, farmers can register food crates and buyers can buy these products using the blockchain. Along the way, the farm and buyers can track each individual crate along the supply chain, from farm to storage, through the distributor, to the grocery shelf or closet of the restaurant.
This is the premise behind the IBM Food Trust network, which registers and tracks many types of food using blockchain technology to ensure food safety throughout the agricultural supply chain.
Market research firm MarketsAndMarkets predicted in a 2018 report that the Asia-Pacific region will experience the fastest growth in the world for agricultural blockchain technology. The market was estimated at $ 60.8 million in 2018 and predicted that the industry would reach $ 429.7 million by 2023.
Blockchain agriculture and food supply chain markets are following a trajectory driven by a growing desire for transparency in the supply chain – to enhance consumer safety and confidence – and the need for suppliers, such as farmers and producers, to feel that they are treated fairly in payment for their work.
The GrainChain infrastructure platform provides a solution to all these problems faced by producers, distributors and consumers. Since the platform’s early access launch, GrainChain has been joined by 1,439 active participants, completed more than 84,410 transactions, and processed more than 5.2 billion pounds of product.
Photo: Pixabay
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