Essential secures €10M to develop the first declarative blockchain: Know more

Essential, a declarative blockchain platform, announced on Tuesday, August 13, that it has secured $11M (approximately €10M) in a Series A funding round led by Archetype.

The following investors participated in the round: IOSG, Spartan, Mirana, Amber Group, Maven 11, Bodhi Ventures, Big Brain Holdings, Heartcore Capital, Selini, DCLM, and PropellerHeads.

Additionally, founders and angel investors from Celestia, Hashflow, Enso, Barter, LI.FI, Astaria, GlueX, Bebop, Sorella, and others were also involved.

The company will use the funds to accelerate the development of its first declarative blockchain.

What is Essential’s declarative model?

According to the company, the declarative approach involves reframing interactions in terms of outcomes, rather than instructions.

This is in contrast with the imperative approach:

• Imperative – Always follow the instructions, regardless of the outcome.
• Declarative – Always output a valid outcome, without the need for instructions.

Traditional blockchain design relies on transactions to update the state by executing specific instructions, causing issues like excessive computation and poor user experience.

Declarative blockchains use constraints to update the state without execution, allowing users to control the state directly.

Pint, a language for programmable intents, enables developers to directly control the state on the Essential blockchain, creating possibilities for advanced applications.

The release of pre-alpha devnet, with Pint as a core building block, provides a playground for early builders to deploy and test declarative applications permissionlessly.

The concept of an executionless blockchain design is now a practical reality that developers can begin working with today.

“By enabling consensus on state updates without requiring on-chain execution, Essential will empower developers to build much more sophisticated and scalable applications than what is currently possible on virtual machine-based chains with traditional gas metering. We are incredibly excited to work alongside Liesl, Simon, and the entire Essential team as they design a chain from first principles with intents as the core primitive and design pattern,” says Dmitriy Berenzon, Partner at Archetype.