Mirror, a blockchain-tapping peer-to-peer trading platform, has raised $8.8 million in a Series A funding round led by Route 66 Ventures.
Existing investors RRE Ventures, Crosslink Capital, Battery Ventures and Tim Draper all joined the round, which brings the total amount raised by Mirror to $12.8 million. Route 66 Ventures' Pascal Bouvier joins the board.
San Francisco-based Mirror will use the funds to hire engineers as it refocuses. The startup began life as a bitcoin exchange called Vaurum but rebranded late last year as it became more interested in smart contracts.
It is now building a smart contracts platform that enables peer-to-peer trading, using bitcoin. Individuals and businesses can use blockchain technology to create and exchange financial contracts. Mirror says that its decentralised market enables new ways to hedge economic and business risks at a fraction of the normal cost, helping to democratise access to financial markets.
Avish Bhama, CEO, Mirror, says: "There is an unbundling of the financial services industry that's occurring right now, and we see an enormous opportunity to provide advanced, more efficient services for risk management and hedging. We're building tools for traditional financial assets, leveraging the Bitcoin protocol."