Binance Labs-Backed Firm Working to Boost Blockchain Speeds Raises $3 Million

Marlin Protocol has reeled in a $3 million seed round from Binance Labs, Arrington XRP, Electric Capital, NGC and other investors.

The startup, based in San Francisco and Bangalore, India, works to increase network speeds across a variety of blockchains.

Throughput constraints - or limitations on how much data can smoothly flow through a network - are seen as a major impediment to widespread blockchain adoption.

Marlin Protocol aims to improve speeds across multiple chains by using what CEO Siddhartha Dutta calls a "Bandwidth-sharing marketplace."

Dutta explained that significant improvements to bandwidth on a blockchain can be made by introducing a subset of new network actors called "Relayers."

"Marlin is a leader in a new class of infrastructure startups in crypto that are blockchain-agnostic and will dramatically increase network performance," Arrington XRP Capital partner Michael Arrington told CoinDesk.

"If anyone is able to bribe just those single-digit relayers, you have brought down the network because they're the ones responsible for all this communication. Now, if every blockchain tries to do this, every blockchain introduces these single points of failure."

Marlin Protocol aims to introduce a large network of relayers able to secure virtually any blockchain.

"Supercharging network performance solves a major problem across proof-of-work and proof-of-stake blockchains today," Electric Capital Managing Partner Curtis Spencer told CoinDesk.

"The project itself is about high-performance networking infrastructure for the decentralized ecosystem. The faster [nodes] can communicate, the faster you can get things done."