Privacy-focused blockchain Beam has received an injection of capital through the RSP Blockchain Fund, a Singapore subsidiary of Tokyo-based Recruit Holdings Ltd.
The undisclosed sum was part of a $25 million fund set up by the HR technology solutions conglomerate, who are the owners of Glassoor and Indeed, the online job search engine, for the purpose of investing in “…start-up companies that use tokens to raise funds [and] it will promote the development and dissemination of blockchain technology.”
With roots stretching back to 1960, Recruit Holdings Ltd reported sales of over $17 billion in 2016.
Privacy and Scalability
Based on the Mimblewimble protocol, Beam is aiming to address two key areas of concern for cryptocurrencies – privacy and scalability.
Leaner in block size and without the need to use public addresses to enable peer-to-peer transactions, Beam originally secured private funding to launch their product.
In their press release, Recruit Holdings implied confidentiality of transactions was the main reason for their interest as the “…Beam token provides a blockchain with a function that prevents the divulgation of transaction data to third parties and protects the user’s transaction data.”
With headquarters in Israel and founded in March 2018 , Beam’s mainnet, termed Agile Atom, launched last month but experienced early teething problems that lead to a brief and temporary halt of block generation.
However, those problems appear to have been addressed quickly, with Beam also announcing earlier this month a collaboration with the Litecoin Foundation to explore the possibility of implementing Mimblewimble via extension blocks on Litecoin itself.
