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Blockstack Unlocks ~$25 Million in Funding

We’re happy to announce that Blockstack PBC has successfully unlocked approximately $25 million in funding from our December 2017 token offering. We structured the Blockstack token offering such that the majority of the capital would only be unlocked when certain, specific milestones were reached. This self-imposed requirement was our way to introduce investor protection. The decision as to whether we met a milestone is determined by an independent Advisory Board, rather than the Blockstack PBC directors or team.

We’ve been heads down designing, building, and testing the Stacks blockchain for over a year. After all that hard work, we’re pleased to announce that the Advisory Board has determined that we met the first milestone by successfully launching the Stacks blockchain.

Milestone 1 required Blockstack PBC to develop and launch a live, operational decentralized network with token functionality i.e., the Stacks blockchain.

The Blockstack token gets fully developed and successfully deployed on the network before Jan 30th, 2019. Token LLC will only use a maximum 20% of the initial Fund investment amount, as of close of the main sale, as operational capital until Milestone 1 is reached. If Milestone 1 is not reached, then the remaining Fund value will be liquidated on a pro rata basis. – Page 9, Blockstack Token Sale Mechanics paper

As of Oct 22nd, the Stacks blockchain was launched, marking the production deployment of the network. We monitored the network for several weeks and the independent Advisory Board met on Nov 14th. The board unanimously determined that Blockstack PBC successfully accomplished Milestone 1, unlocking the corresponding capital.

We plan to generally apply the additional capital to continue engineering efforts, fuel developers through the App Mining program, and cover operational expenses.

In addition to continued development and improvement of the Stacks blockchain and developer tools, Blockstack PBC is now also focusing on Milestone 2, which is tied to reaching 1 million users on the Blockstack network.

We thank the Blockstack community for their continued support. Blockstack PBC is actively hiring; you can check out the open positions here.


This blog post contains forward-looking statements, including statements regarding Blockstack PBC’s plans for use of funds. Forward-looking statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially, and reported results should not be considered as an indication of future performance. Potential risks and uncertainties that could change our actual results include, but are not limited to, risks associated with changes in business needs that require the use of funds for other purposes. These forward-looking statements speak only as of the date hereof. Blockstack PBC disclaims any obligation to update these forward-looking statements.

Muneeb Ali

Muneeb Ali

Dr. Muneeb Ali is the founder of Stacks, a decentralized network that brings apps and smart contracts to Bitcoin. He serves as the CEO of Hiro PBC, a Public Benefit Corp that builds developer tools for the Stacks blockchain. He has raised $75 million USD in funding from investors like Union Square Ventures, Y Combinator, Lux Capital, Winklevoss Capital, and others. Hiro (formerly Blockstack PBC) was featured in the CNBC's list of 100 promising startups to watch. Muneeb received his Ph.D. and Masters in Computer Science from Princeton University. His Ph.D. thesis was nominated for the ACM SIGCOMM dissertation award by Princeton University. Muneeb gives guest lectures on cloud computing at Princeton and his research publications have over 1,300 citations. He is one of the main characters in George Gilder's book Life After Google and was a technical advisor to the HBO show Silicon Valley.