South Korean app provider, Kakao, has helped to raise over $15 million in cryptocurrency for Orbs, a hybrid blockchain platform.

Orbs Blockchain Raises $15 Million

Kakao joined the fundraising venture through its investment arm because it “always seeks to invest and support innovative startups and Orbs is a good example.”

It also builds on the pair’s existing partnership; Orb already partners with Kakao’s blockchain subsidiary, Ground X. The two companies develop blockchain applications, along with researching and developing projects.

The latest investment will “focus on helping Orbs further the protocol’s development and growth.”

On the investment, Daniel Peled, Orbs CEO and Co-Founder said:

“With Kakao’s consumer applications counting more than 50 million active users worldwide, the investment in Orbs represents a significant endorsement of the long-term potential of our technology.”

About Orbs Blockchain

But what exactly is Orbs doing? How is it innovative?

According to its website Orbs is “a public blockchain to complement base-layer protocols.”

Describing itself as a “universal and scalable second layer for decentralized applications with the liquidity of a base layer,” Orbs is a hybrid public blockchain that proves performance without compromising security.

Raising Funds

The startup raised approximately 139,000 Ether and 892 Bitcoin. This amounts to around $15.4 million USD at the time of writing.

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Orbs is planning on putting the cash into further research and development of its core technology.

Peled explained further:

“A lot of the funds have been used for R&D and research, and one of the other verticals that are very important is obviously to enable the growth of the ecosystem around the infrastructure […] The test product is already live, and people can use the APIs and we’ve released a testnet version.”

The fundraiser has been running throughout 2018, and the company has been clever with its raised cryptocurrency. To avoid market decline (and 2018 has been one big decline!) Orbs has been converting some of its cryptos along the way into fiat currencies.

Orbs’ mainnet is scheduled to go live in April 2019.