Two companies in the blockchain space have recently received funding; healthcare consortium Hashed Health raised $2 million, while Blockstack, a decentralised DNS system built on top of the Bitcoin blockchain, has raised $4 million.
Hashed Health’s round was led by investment firm Martin Ventures, while Blockstack’s was led by Union Square Ventures, with participation by Lux Capital, Naval Ravikant, Digital Currency Group, Compound, Version One, Kal Vepuri and Rising Tide.
With 50 years of experience in healthcare operations and IT integrations, Hashed Health plans to work together with healthcare enterprises to advance distributed ledger solutions to address healthcare industry issues.
Charles Martin, chairman and founder of Martin Ventures, said: “Blockchain and distributed ledger technologies hold tremendous promise in our attempts to place the consumer at the centre of the healthcare ecosystem. The healthcare industry must be drastically reformed in order to address problems related to quality, cost and waste. Hashed Health is poised to drive innovation and collaboration to reach these goals.”
Shanghai-based blockchain venture capital firm Fenbushi Capital’s Founding Partner Bo Shen said: “We strongly believe Hashed Health’s blockchain technology will play an important role in bringing transparency, efficiency and robustness into the global healthcare economy.”
Originally a decentralised identity system putting users in control, Blockstack has since expanded into a full platform for decentralised applications, providing services including DNS/naming, storage and authentication, which are all critical components of the new internet.
All of the Blockstack software is open source and is maintained by the Blockstack community. Blockstack Inc has also been established, which is an organisation formed to push the Blockstack protocol forward.
Interested in hearing leading global brands discuss subjects like this in person? Find out more at the Blockchain Expo World Series, Global, Europe and North America.
