OPEN, the first blockchain payments infrastructure for applications announced the addition of Tim Draper’s Draper Dragon Digital Asset Fund, a venture capital firm that invests in early-stage, high growth companies in Silicon Valley and Asia. The firm’s managing director, Andy Tang, will support OPEN as they build the first ‘developer wallet’ through its inception of blockchain’s first payment infrastructure for centralized and decentralized application developers.
OPEN appeals to existing applications and new applications by enabling current applications to integrate OPEN’s technology without having to redevelop existing application stacks. Further, a developer’s application can be ported to various smart contract based blockchains through a single integration by piggybacking off of OPEN’s Scaffold.
“As a prominent leader in the blockchain space, Draper Dragon’s backing is a tremendous endorsement for OPEN’s technology for blockchain payments,” said OPEN CEO and Founder Ken Sangha. “Their support strengthens our vision of becoming a catalyst for blockchain adoption and integration by empowering mainstream software developers.”
Centralized applications, including leading entertainment platforms and mobile games, such as Netflix and Candy Crush, as well as newer decentralized applications, can incorporate OPEN’s accompanying payment rails applications needed to accept blockchain and cryptocurrency technologies in a way that applies to many current application infrastructures.
Most applications require the use of off-chain technologies, meaning traditional components that do not exist on blockchains such as a database to interact with transactions taking place on the blockchain, thus requiring applications to require both on-chain and off-chain components. OPEN provides this missing infrastructure for developers to enable application backends to interface with blockchain wallets and the two-way communication of payment data between on-chain and off-chain systems.
OPEN’s current application developer partners consist of both centralized and decentralized applications from a variety of categories from gaming to enterprise partners. OPEN’s developer growth program is aimed at supporting application developers to build blockchain or cryptocurrency integrations via funding, marketing, technology, and growth acceleration.
The OPEN team has years of experience founding, growing and developing mobile applications, including leading application development for Facebook, Grindr, Samsung’s Milk Music, Viacom’s video suite and deploying the Asia-Pacific headquarters for multi-billion dollar giant, Pivotal Labs. OPEN’s leadership is part of the most prestigious blockchain groups from Blockchain at Berkeley to the Blockchain Research Institute, and have contributed to a number of on-chain projects and Solidity libraries.