HTX Ventures, Infinity Ventures Crypto, DWF Labs, and other investment firms participated in a fundraising round for a company aiming to enhance data storage methods. The decentralized storage platform, Cumulus Encrypted Storage System (CESS), successfully raised approximately USD 8 million from over 13 venture capital companies, as announced on December 28. The funds will be utilized to “drive technological advancements, expand global operations, and strengthen CESS’s position in the decentralized infrastructure sector,” according to a CESS representative speaking to Cointelegraph.
CESS, as per its documents, functions as both a blockchain network and a decentralized storage system. It enables file storage across multiple nodes, identifying them through their hash. It comprises four components or “layers”: blockchain, data storage, content distribution, and application layer. The system employs various cryptographic protocols to ensure data permanence, such as Proof of Duplication and Recovery (PoDR²) and Multi-Format Data Confirmation (MDRC). CESS aims to be applied in large-scale commercial applications.
HTX Ventures, Infinity Ventures Crypto, DWF Labs, Mentha Partners, Vespertine Capital, Web3 Foundation, Singchain Investment, 7 O’Clock Capital, SolrDAO, FishDAO, OneBlock+, Winkrypto, and Polkadot Ecology Research Institute were among the participants in the fundraising.
Nicholas Zaldastani, co-founder and president of CESS, stated that the funds would be used to further develop the protocol: “This funding will allow us to continue our mission of providing the next generation of global decentralized data services for Web3, including support for large-scale commercial use cases that require high-end security, performance, storage, CDN, high-frequency trading, and millisecond data recovery.”
The demand for decentralized storage space has surged in 2023. Filecoin witnessed over 7% utilization in the second quarter, and Arweave’s transaction volume increased by more than 717% throughout the year, according to blockchain analytics platform ViewBlock. CESS claims its protocol can be applied in various future applications, including the “Metaverse, NFTs, DeFi, streaming media, social networks, gaming, [and] real-world assets (RWA).”