Solana automation network Clockwork raises $4 million

Clockwork, a decentralized automation network for Solana, announced the closure of a $4 million seed round co-led by Multicoin Capital and Asymmetric. 

Solana Ventures also participated in the round, according to a release on Tuesday. El Cap Ventures is also an investor and participated in a prior round, according to a Clockwork spokesperson.

The network enables developers to schedule recurring tasks and automate on-chain workflows with the Solana validator network, said Nick Garfield, founder and CEO of Clockwork in the release. 

Automating tasks can be more difficult to execute in decentralized environments, he added. Clockwork solves this by incentivizing validators to execute scheduled transactions, which means developers will be able to implement automated tasks without sacrificing decentralization. 

The new funds will be used to expand the team, build community and support partner integrations. 

The startup is currently working with multisig wallet and DAO tooling services to provide payroll solutions like scheduled token transfers, said a spokesperson.

“Clockwork answers a whole bunch of questions that have held back dapp development from moving up the stack—How should nodes track and delegate scheduled tasks? What if a malicious node attempts to execute a task ahead of schedule? Is the scheduler fault-tolerant if some nodes go down? None of these questions had answers before Clockwork,” said Kyle Samani, managing partner at Multicoin Capital, in the release. 

Incentivizing infrastructure

Validators that install Clockwork’s plugin will be able to collect automation fees from crank tasks, which is the act of automating an instruction on the blockchain. This will increase their yields, per the release. 

Founded in September 2021, Clockwork, formerly known as Cronos, was initially setup to develop a payment programs on Solana. It recently won the Solana Riptide hackathon, which is a global hackathon with 7,000 participants. 

“At Asymmetric, we’ve studied the massive impact that ‘cron’ has had on systems-level programming and applications since the late 1970s. Clockwork will usher in the latest iteration of ‘cron’ into web3, and we're excited to see this effort,” said Joe McCann, founder and managing partner, of Asymmetric in a statement. 

The Block Research's July funding report noted that in previous market cycles of digital assets, during market turmoil, infrastructure plays have often proven a favored investment choice. 

The Block Research

Blockchain infrastructure venture funding by month from The Block Research

This article was updated after publication to reflect fresh information about the backers provided by Clockwork.