Chinese Blockchain Startup Raises $4.5M Via crowdsale

A China-based blockchain company is celebrating a series of firsts for the distributed ledger space after raising $4.5 million via crowdsale.

Used by bitcoin and blockchain companies to attract investment, crowdsale enable firms to issue tokens that represent shares in their firms, a tactic proponents say enables a sort of democratization of share buying and trading.

On Friday (Sept. 30), Antshares Blockchain, based in Shanghai, said it raised $4.5 million using this strategy. The funds will be used to complete development of what it calls its “Onchain universal blockchain” framework that aims to digitize and manage the movement of physical goods and assets. According to reports, those assets can be anything from real estate titles to products within the supply chain.

Onchain is the Chinese startup that umbrellas the Antshares project.

Reports also highlighted how Antshares is forging new paths in this industry of distributed ledger technology.

The company is said to be the first project in China that offers an open-source blockchain tool, and the latest investment marks the first “significant” ICO; reports said more than half of the investors participating in the investment came from outside China.

Further, Antshares is the first Chinese blockchain company to collaborate with Microsoft Azure and the Hyperledger Project, reports added.

“Our vision is to make Onchain a truly universal blockchain framework,” said Antshares creator and CEO and founder of Onchain, Da Hongfei. “Utilizing different plug-in modules, our framework could be applied for a public chain, a consortium chain or even a private chain. Our cross-chain adaptor module, currently under development, creates interoperability among these different chains.”

According to reports, Onchain and the Antshares project are now looking to release its solution globally by the end of October.