Outlier Ventures becomes chief investor in Haja Networks

Pedestrians at Bay and King Streets, with the Bank of Nova Scotia building in the background. Toronto, Canada. The intersection of Bay Street and King Street is considered the heart of Canada’s financial industry. Outlier Ventures’ Toronto office is located at 372 Bay Street, Suite 506.

Prominent blockchain and Web 3.0 venture capital company Outlier Ventures has become chief investor in, and strategic partner to, foundational distributed and decentralized technologies developer Haja Networks, according to a press release CoinReport received from Fire on the Hill, Outlier’s communications agency. The funding round featured other top investors and partners as well, including Creathor Ventures, BigchainDB and Polychain Capital.

The team behind Haja Networks has some of the initial team members of OrbitDB and IPFS that is developing two new and complimentary open-source protocols to allow for decentralized databases.   

An open protocol to create decentralized databases, a decentralized database protocol allows for users to own and control their data. It incorporates with running databases, opening them to the decentralized web, and allows for interoperability between structured data sources.

A decentralized database network is a marketplace for decentralized database services. It enables providers to commercialize their software applications at the same time as data hungry firms have easy access to the broadest variety of services.

Haja Networks is headed by innovative developer & CEO Samuli Pöyhtäri and CTO Vesa-Ville Piiroinen.

Pöyhtäri, an ex-IPFS core developer, is at the center of decentralized databases and storage systems. He is also renowned for developing OrbitDB, a P2P database for the decentralized web that is utilized by several decentralized apps and projects. Piiroinen, on the other hand, has decades of experience in distributed systems and enterprise database and security solutions.

Outlier Ventures CEO Jamie Burke stated in the press release we received, “Blockchains today generally can’t handle most database sizes and throughput volumes and that will likely still be the case even when proposed scalability solutions come online. In fact, in many cases a blockchain is simply overkill for the majority of use-cases but there is still a requirement for decentralisation just without making all the trade-offs between cost, speed and security. Therefore what’s often really needed is interoperability between decentralized networks. It’s this that holds the most promise to a world full of decentralised applications that have high performance and a great user experience to rival and ultimately replace today’s centralised web.”

Haja Networks has already sturdily presented itself as an important part to functional decentralized databases associating with Berlin-based BigchainDB, which has now also strategically invested in Haja.

“There are great projects seeking to make decentralised data storage and data exchange possible, but there’s a significant gap for decentralized databases, which are able to update and structure data in a scalable way,” added Pöyhtäri.

He continued, “The team at Outlier Ventures recognise and share our vision. The capital investment itself is just one small part of the partnership. Outlier have the knowledge, network and depth of team to help us deliver our vision over several years to become a foundational part of the new decentralized web.” 

Creathor Ventures partner Christian Weniger commented, “Haja Networks’ founders impressed us with their clear product vision and sector expertise. We are excited to support them on their quest to bring interoperability to decentralized networks.”

Image credit – Rémi Carreirofrom Toronto, Canada (Source: Rushing) (CC BY-SA 2.0)