New York blockchain business ConsenSys acquires Fluidity

26 May 2020

The Brooklyn Bridge in New York. Image: © Byelikova Oksana/Stock.adobe.com

After a joint venture between the two companies, ConsenSys has acquired the team and technology behind Brooklyn blockchain start-up Fluidity.

On Friday (22 May), New York-headquartered blockchain start-up ConsenSys announced that it has acquired the team and technology behind Fluidity, which is a Brooklyn-based blockchain technology company.

ConsenSys, which also has an office in Dublin, was founded in 2014 by CEO Joseph Lubin. In a statement about the deal, the company explained that Fluidity is the primary developer of AirSwap, which enables peer-to-peer trading on the Ethereum blockchain. AirSwap was founded as a joint venture between ConsenSys and Fluidity in 2017.

Fluidity has also produced solutions for real-estate tokenisation, tokenised securities trading and systems to pledge real collateral to decentralised credit platforms. Financial terms of the acquisition were not revealed.

The acquisition

ConsenSys said that the Fluidity team will continue to build AirSwap with the support of the acquiring company’s business development, engineering and marketing teams. Fluidity’s technology will also be leveraged by ConsenSys Codefi to power commerce and decentralised finance.

In its statement, ConsenSys said: “As part of the acquisition, the Fluidity team and its products will transition to ConsenSys. The blockchain engineers and fintech experts behind AirSwap will continue to empower the world with frictionless trade by focusing on network growth and new token mechanisms.”

Lubin said that bringing Fluidity fully into ConsenSys will “unlock powerful synergies” that the companies have identified over the past few months, looking at different niches that they can bring forward at scale. “We are excited to reinvigorate the longstanding close relationship,” he added.

ConsenSys said that the acquisition signals that it is strengthening its core product suite to bring to market new innovations in financial infrastructure built on Ethereum.

Michael Oved, CEO and co-founder of Fluidity, added: “The future is bright for decentralised trading, blockchain technology and upgrading legacy financial infrastructure. Together with ConsenSys, the power of our systems can be fully realised.”

Kelly Earley was a journalist with Silicon Republic

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