Ankr

Ankr is a provider of blockchain infrastructure services and Web3 developer tools. The company offers plug-and-play tools for developers to launch their own blockchain network and validator nodes. It also provides a white-label block explorer to display transaction and address data of blockchains.

For dApp developers, it offers node-as-a-service via APIs to launch dApps on layer-1 and layer-2 networks. As of December 2022, it supported 27 networks including Ethereum , BSC , Avalanche , Polygon , and Arbitrum . It also provides APIs that allows dApps to be deployed on multiple chains. In addition, Ankr provides a Game Studio to develop blockchain-based games based on Unity and Unreal game engines.

Ankr also provides a distributed node infrastructure called Ultra Sound Infrastructure , which allows enterprises, developers, and dApps to communicate and access over 45 blockchains. This exclusively utilizes archive nodes that are designed to handle large volumes of traffic, offering users reliable and readily available infrastructure.

In addition, the company offers staking services for popular layer-1 and layer-2 networks such as Ethereum, Polygon, Binance, Avalanche, and Polkadot.

Key customers and partnerships

As of December 2022, Ankr had 39,000 developers using its platform. It also formed a partnership with Microsoft, to provide enterprise-grade node-hosting services on the Microsoft Azure Marketplace for dApp developers and builders.

In addition, Ankr collaborated with Optimism to launch rollup-as-a-service for the latter’s OP Chains, providing services such as blockchain engineering, rollup infrastructure management (nodes and validators, development tools and frameworks, security and audit advice), as well as ongoing troubleshooting and performance assistance. This was further expanded to include new capabilities and wider availability of the service, allowing developers to build layer-2 networks with partners such as ZKsync and Polygon.

Funding and financials

The company raised USD 15 million in a funding round in June 2018, from Danhua Capital, Pantera Capital, NEO Global Capital, and OK Blockchain Capital. It intended to utilize the fresh funds for product development and marketing. In addition, it secured a strategic investment from Binance Labs in August 2022. The funding amount was not disclosed; however, the investment proceeds were geared toward improving its remote procedure call (RPC) service and building out its Web3 developer suite.