Bloq Buys Blockchain Analytics Firm Skry in First Acquisition

Blockchain analytics startup Skry has been acqui-hired by Bloq.

Though few details have been initially disclosed, the deal was closed late last week, bringing both the assets and team behind Skry under the Bloq umbrella.

The acqui-hire is Bloq’s first since its launch in early 2016, backed by $250,000 in funding by Tally Capital – the VC fund of which Bloq co-founder Matthew Roszak is founding partner.

The news comes months after Skry, originally known as Coinalytics, rebranded and moved to service the broader blockchain market. In statements, Bloq said that it plans to utilize the tools and skills developed at Skry as it looks to expand in the enterprise blockchain market.

According to Bloq co-founder and CEO Jeff Garzik, the move complements existing work already underway at the startup.

He told CoinDesk:

"The whole thing behind Bloq is we have a wide stack that are sold together as one unit. And this gives us a real acceleration of the analytics offering... The Skry team and Skry intellectual property and software are really going to give that a jumpstart. We were building out an analytics platform and this is an additive to that package."

Skry – which was founded in 2014 and raised $1.1m in 2015 – was one of the early entrants in the bitcoin analytics marketplace, providing risk assessment services to exchanges and wallet services. The idea, according to Bloq, is to use that approach as part of a broader pitch to the enterprise space.

Last year, the firm joined professional services firm PwC, along with blockchain startups Libra and Netki, in launching a platform called Vulcan Digital Asset Services, aiming to create a hub for the development of new kinds of digital assets.

"We’re looking at private blockchains, permission blockchains analytics... We’re going to implement it across multiple blockchains," said Garzik.

Speaking to CoinDesk, Roszak indicated that the analytics component was a "key piece" of that approach, adding:

"Without analytics you’re missing a key piece to the puzzle to know how the blockchains are behaving."

Disclosure: CoinDesk is a subsidiary of Digital Currency Group, which has an ownership stake in Bloq.

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