Ironforge, a serverless Solana development platform that improves the developer experience and streamlines integration of the Solana blockchain into existing systems, released its private beta today following a $2.6 million pre-seed raise. The round was led by Reciprocal Ventures and saw significant contributions from Hash3, 6th Man Ventures, Alchemy, Monoceros Ventures and Portage Ventures.
Developing blockchain applications, especially on Solana, is a complex and ever-changing endeavor due to the novel nature of the technology. Ironforge abstracts away much of this complexity to enable Solana developers to instead focus on the unique and innovative aspects of their projects. The platform is built on low-latency, globally distributed Edge Runtimes that simplify app integration and provide Solana developers with a slate of highly demanded features such as low-cost retrieval of indexed account data, RPC smart routing and failover, automatic parsing, developer-defined cache controls and many other features.
“I’ve had the longstanding conviction that blockchain’s potential won’t be unlocked until web3 devs have access to frameworks and tooling that are similar to what we’ve grown accustomed to in web2,” says Italo Casas, CEO of Ironforge. “We created Ironforge to ensure developers need to do as little undifferentiated work as possible, devoting as much of their time and energy towards the thing that makes their product unique.”
The pre-seed announcement comes at a time of renewed focus on developer engagement and ecosystem growth on Solana. Solana has recorded consistent month over month growth in active addresses on the network in 2023; as of the end of May, the chain saw over 12.67 million active addresses, representing 64.1% MoM growth1. Qualitative indicators for ecosystem growth have also started the year strong; Grizzlython, the largest hackathon in the history of the Solana ecosystem, concluded in Q1 with over 800 submissions and $5 million in total prizes and seed funding awarded to Solana devs. As the number of Solana users and builders return to the network following the 2022 downturn, platforms such as Ironforge are pivotal to improve developer experience and usher in the next generation of applications on the network.
“The Ironforge platform has the potential to become the global standard for creating applications on Solana,” said Craig Burel, Partner at Reciprocal Ventures. “By providing a seamless and delightful developer experience, we expect Ironforge will accelerate the utilization of web3 across the broader developer ecosystem.”
Carl Vogel from 6th Man Ventures added, “Ironforge lowers the barrier to configure, deploy and maintain production grade programs on Solana, accelerating innovation cycles and enabling developers to spend more time on feature development. We are thrilled to back Ironforge as they make Web3 development as seamless as Web2.”
The introduction of Ironforge is a watershed moment for Solana developers. This first fundraise has empowered Ironforge to move from ideation to production, and expand its team to include several rising stars from the Solana developer community. Those interested in learning more about Ironforge are now free to join the waitlist for platform access.