Quick take:
Celestia’s Nick White, Babylon’s David Tse, Axelar’s Sergey Gorbunov, Lau Ventures’ Waikit Lau, and VentureFriends’ Apostolos Apostolaki joined as angel investors.
Pod is building a “consensusless” layer-1 network where all transactions are directly streamed to validators for attestation and timestamping.
This method could allow Pod to achieve transaction speeds of up to 200 milliseconds “similar to Google search”, according to CEO Shresth Agrawal.
Pod has announced a $10 million seed round co-led by A16z Crypto’s Startup Accelerator and 1kx. The fundraising also attracted participation from Flashbots, Blockchain Builders Fund and Protagonist, with Celestia’s Nick White, Babylon’s David Tse, Axelar’s Sergey Gorbunov, Lau Ventures’ Waikit Lau, and VentureFriends’ Apostolos Apostolaki joined as angel investors, The Block reported.
The company is building a “consensusless” layer-1 network where all transactions are directly streamed to validators for attestation and timestamping. According to CEO Shresth Agrawal, Pod’s approach to transaction validation could allow its layer-1 network to achieve transaction speeds of up to 200 milliseconds “similar to Google search”.
Explaining how Pod trumps other blockchains in terms of transaction speeds on its website, Pod says that in other networks, validators must wait for a block to appear to receive a transaction confirmation, adding artificial delay. “Our streaming design allows us to confirm transactions as soon as they receive sufficient signatures,” the statement reads.
Agarwal believes fast transaction speeds are essential for Web3 to receive mass adoption, as they must match the seamless experience achieved by web2 applications.
Pod is primarily looking to power applications in gaming, social networks, stablecoin payments, decentralized exchanges and AI agents, with its devnet scheduled for launch in the coming weeks. The testnet is planned for Q3 2025, with a mainnet launch in Q1 2026.
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