The Web3 development platform fleek has raised $25 million in Series A funding led by Polychain Capital.
Additional investors in the round include Coinbase Ventures, Digital Currency Group, Protocol Labs, Arweave, North Island Ventures, Distributed Global, The LAO, and Argonautic Ventures.
The startup aims to build an interface and protocol layer “to make the base layer of web3 services” like storage, hosting, and billing, accessible to anyone., according to your site.
“Our main initial focus is the content delivery market”said Harrison Hines, co-founder of fleek. “That's what Fleek serves today and where we see a big lack in the web3 infrastructure stack. It is a problem with all web3 protocols”.
The content delivery market (CDM) is dominated by some big players like Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Cloudflare., to name a few, Hines said. and although fleek originally worked with Web 2.0 infrastructure providers like AWS and Cloudflare, plans to launch its own Fleek Network in 2023 and provide web3 technologies such as decentralization, while still achieving Web 2.0-like performance, Hines added.
“Our vision for the Fleek Network at its core is a decentralized perimeter network where anyone can run nodes and provide resources to the network,” Hines said.
fleek hosts around 50,000 apps on its platform today, primarily within the Ethereum ecosystem, but also between other protocols, Hines noted. To date, all Fleek products are based on cryptographic protocols such as Ethereum, Filecoin, Internet Computer, InterPlanetary File System (IPFS), and Textile.
The new capital will be used to build out the Fleek Network and the platform, while attracting additional talent and growing its community, Hines said.
The startup will first focus on developing in the web3 ecosystem, but will then expand into Web 2.0 businesses like gaming platforms, streaming services or any platform with heavy traffic, which is typically one of its biggest costs, Hines said. . "In this market, where large companies are looking to cut costs, we believe the Fleek Network can be an attractive solution and an easier jump."
Fleek's pricing is "fluid, so the metrics can be adjusted as you grow," Hines said, but compared to Cloudflare, which charges 5-15 cents per gigabyte for bandwidth, fleek it aims to stay under a penny per gigabyte, making it five to fifteen times less expensive.
