India-based Shardeum finalized its $18.2 million seed funding, raising a valuation to $199 million.

According to Sharedeum, co-founded by Indian stock exchange WazirX blockchain founder and architect Omar Syed, the seed round saw the participation of more than 50 investors, including Spartan Group, Big Brain Holdings, Jane Street and Foresight Ventures.

The funding round was carried out through a private token sale, with the company expected to launch in the first quarter of next year and then hold a public token sale.

Balaji Srinivasan, former CTO of Coinbase, said: “I invested in Shardeum because I think they are trying an interesting approach to scale, which increases TPS as more validating nodes are added.”

By comparison, Shardeum’s $18 million raise is an appropriate size for a seed round in the third quarter of the year, as the amount is closer to the average Series A check size of $22, 8 million.

According to the company, the new funds will be used to increase marketing efforts and improve the development team.

In order to provide incentives for developers to build on the ecosystem, Shardeum plans to host hackathons in India and the US.

Previously, the startup announced that it was aiming to raise $18 million at a $200 valuation in August.

The company is a proof-of-stake blockchain platform. It uses dynamic state fragmentation technology for efficiency gains and to scale the network.

Sharding also helps break down the blockchain infrastructure into smaller parts. Helps increase block space for more transactions and lower gas fees.

According to the company’s announcement, the system has been designed to eliminate user experience issues faced by users and developers of existing and shared blockchains.

Shetty said in a statement, “The blockchain trilemma has been a difficult problem to solve, and scalability it is the biggest factor preventing wider adoption of cryptocurrencies, especially in emerging markets like India.”

He added: “The web3 ecosystem has seen massive growth. For web3 to add a billion users in the next few years, we need a scalable L1 blockchain that guarantees 1-cent fees forever while maintaining decentralization. Shardeum aims to have that happen.”

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