Blockchain startup Trust Machines has launched out of stealth today with $150 million in funding to expand bitcoin as a Web3 platform.
Venture capital firms participating in the round include Breyer Capital, Digital Currency Group, GoldenTree, Hivemind and Union Square Ventures.
Co-founded by Stacks, previously Blockstacks, by Muneeb Ali (pictured) and Princeton University computer science professor J.P. Singh, Trust Machines is building an ecosystem of applications and platform technologies aimed at unlocking what it views as bitcoin’s potential as a final settlement layer for computing platforms and applications.
Trust Machines says it wants to extend bitcoin from being only a passive store of value to being the final settlement layer for a powerful new computational platform. The company plans enable and grow the new economy of applications powered by bitcoin and settled on the bitcoin blockchain.
A recurring theme of bitcoin is core in the company’s pitch. Trust Machines says that the decentralization of trust, embodied in the bitcoin blockchain, is one of the most impactful technical innovations of the last couple of decades. Other companies and startups building their own blockchains or use existing chains such as Ethereum, but Trust Machines argues that the only reason that other blockchains have been successful is that they have been the only platform on which to run decentralized applications. This is where Trust Machibes steps in.
“For longer-term success, however, we believe that high-value applications should be built on bitcoin as the final settlement layer,” Ali explained in a blog post. “This is because the transformational properties of trust without centralization (openness, freedom from censorship, and scarcity) are premised on decentralization, security and durability as strong as that of bitcoin, which none of the others comes close to providing.”
Trust Machines plans to build applications and underlying technology necessary to unleash the true potential of bitcoin as a final settlement layer. The company will build upon the success of Stack, where Ali was previously chief executive officer, to expand on the Stacks programming layer to make it faster and easier to develop on. Trust Machines will also build applications that make bitcoin productive such as trustless bitcoin lending.
“Our mission is to build the largest ecosystem of bitcoin applications and grow the bitcoin economy,” Ali added.
