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Blockchain Startup Stratumn Makes Inroads in France

Last Updated March 4, 2021 4:47 PM
Samburaj Das
Last Updated March 4, 2021 4:47 PM

Paris-based Stratumn, a blockchain developer platform that provides enterprise-grade tools for developers to leverage the features of public and permissioned blockchains into their applications has raised €600,000 in seed funding recently. The funding is a first of its kind for a blockchain startup in France.

In a round led by French VC firm Otium Venture and other investors including hardware bitcoin wallet Ledger’s CEO Eric Larchevêque, French blockchain startup Stratumn  raised €600,000 in seed funding.

The Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) model startup leverages public blockchains’ features such as the Bitcoin blockchain with its toolkit for enterprise developers.

With a new open standard called “Chainscript”, Stratumn has developed a platform that enables the recording of data and workflows, using the Bitcoin blockchain’s ability to store objective and verifiable proof-of-existence of data.

Stratumn was founded by Richard Caetano, developer of Bitcoin ticker app btcReport and Stephan Florquin, the former lead developer at French bitcoin exchange Paymium.

Speaking to CCN.com, Stratumn CEO Richard Caetano revealed that the startup is currently deploying proof-of-concept solutions for the healthcare and banking industries.

What will the newly raised funds be used for?
We’ve raised our seed round to grow our team to build and deploy our platform and proof of concepts in real world applications.  From this work, we will bring the results back into the product to ensure a tight market fit.  With a proven market fit, we plan to raise a Series A round this summer.
What are the kinds of industries that have signed up for blockchain-based solutions?
Currently, we are deploying proof of concepts to demonstrate the technology in the banking and health care.  Within banking, we’re leveraging objective proof from the blockchain to improve the KYC and compliance processes, and in health care, to secure clinical trials data as it’s shared between research labs, doctors, and scientists.
Besides finance, which industry do you see wherein blockchain immediately making an impression and a change?
Our first offering is to secure workflows that are shared between multiple business partners.  In addition to banking and health, our targets include process automation, insurance, legal and IoT.  In general, we want to reduce the complexities involved when business partners share a common workflow or business process.
As a private blockchain developer, how similar and/or dissimilar is the blockchain technology you’re developing from the bitcoin blockchain?
Stratumn is focused on delivering what we call “blockchain features”.  Examples of these features are “proof of existence” and “digital ownership”.  These features are only available through blockchain adoption and depends on the characteristics of the underlying networks.
As far as the public vs private blockchain debate goes, we see them as a spectrum of options each with their own set of qualities that can be useful for various use cases.  In a world where millions of blockchains are deployed, there is no one size fits all.  Ultimately, these networks must work with each other.
In the immediate future, when do you anticipate blockchain making a difference in modern society, around the world?
I think the Bitcoin network has already made a difference in the world.  It’s forcing us to look at information technology in a different way.  For example, if you look at how we share transactional data between partners today it  usually involves private databases, secured by database administrators, with its data exchanged through various API’s.  With this approach, it’s very difficult to secure, share and synchronize the data and transactions.  Database administrators are single points of failure and concurrency is tricky to implement.  I believe we will soon realize that blockchains are an elegant and superior approach to solving this complexity.
What’s the future for Stratumn?
We believe in a day where millions of blockchains are deployed.  These blockchain networks will be dynamic intersections where value is exchanged and transparent partnerships are enabled. Our work is to deliver enterprise grade tools and services to build, launch and maintain these networks.  The future of Stratumn is to participate as a catalyst as markets are transformed by this amazing leap in information technology.