Startup Blockstack raised mln $ 50 on ICO with participation of venture funds

ICO of Blockstack start-up officially completed - the company announced the collection of 50 million dollars through the sale of 440 million tokens. Crowdsale started in November, with investors such as Union Square Ventures (USV), Foundation Capital, Lux Capital, Winklevoss Capital, Blockchain Capital, Digital Currency Group, Techcrunch founder Michael Arrington and Digg founder Kevin Rose. In their statements the Blockstack team tried to emphasize that all investors should be considered as long-term partners, each of which agreed to take an open position regarding the project's Cryptocurrency.

The Blockstack startup said that the largest investments come from an unnamed fund that invested $ 6 million in the project, agreeing to a four-year blocking of purchased tokens (conditions for other investors are a two-year lock with a maximum of $ 3 million). Co-founder of the company Munib Ali said: 

"I think it's more like a funding round, with high-quality sophisticated investors, rather than random people just throwing money at something"

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Elsewhere, Blockstack provided a host of metrics on the offering. More than 800 people and entities were said to have participated in the public token sale (a pre-sale was not offered), where the minimum investment was $3,000. The median investment was $6,140.

Further, Blockstack was keen to note its own guarantees.

Of the funds acquired, only $10 million will be immediately available to the company, as the firm has agreed to a lock-up until milestones are hit. The next $20 million will be released when its board of advisors verifies it has delivered the next version of its product, a network that integrates the token.

The final $20 million will be secured when it achieves its final milestone, one million verified users.

Founded in 2013, Blockstack has been building a decentralized architecture for publishing on the internet, one designed around user control. To realize that goal, the "stacks" token will run on Blockstack's virtualchain technology, according to the white paper.

Co-founder Ryan Shea told CoinDesk: 

"We have always emphasized that the token sale is a very important thing for the ecosystem, for us to be able to contribute resources, but at the end of the day the more important aspect of what we're doing is introducing the token itself and what it does for the ecosystem."

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