Blockchain startup Skale Labs raised nearly $10 million in an effort to develop a blockchain scalability infrastructure for ethereum, the company announced Thursday.

The startup says in a press statement that it raised $8.86 million in a Simple Agreement for Future Tokens (SAFT) sale led by Multicoin Capital, on top of $785,000 raised earlier this year.

Galaxy Digital, Aspect Ventures, Blockchange Ventures, Boost.VC, Canaan Venture Partners, Floodgate Fund, Hack.VC, Neo Global Capital and Signia Venture Partners also participated in the sale.

The company intends to launch an open-source permissionless blockchain targeted toward providing ethereum-based decentralized application (dapp) developers a new base platform to build upon.

In particular, Skale intends to launch the first implementation of the Ethereum Virtual Machine on a Plasma chain – a move it says would help dapp developers by giving them a layer-2 platform on which to execute smart contracts.

Using Skale’s network will enable dapps to conduct “millions of transactions per second at a fraction of the cost of what’s possible today,” the release claims.

Jack O’Holleran, co-founder and CEO of Skale Labs, said in a statement that “helping Ethereum dapp developers scale applications is the center of what we do.”

He added:

“We are sharply focused on making Layer 2 easy, fast, secure and cost-effective for anyone who wants to run smart contracts on Ethereum … We are looking forward to bringing this network to market in a fully open-source, [peer-to-peer] manner.”

The startup plans to set its testnet live by the end of 2018 and activate its mainnet in the upcoming year. A foundation will also be launched to support the network, similar to the Ethereum Foundation and its work supporting the Ethereum mainnet, the firm says.

“Skale is uniquely positioned to dominate Layer 2 on Ethereum,” said Multicoin Capital managing partner Kyle Samani, adding that the project is “Ethereum’s best shot at fending off competition from other smart contract platforms.”

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