Cryptocurrency startup Andrena raises $18 million in investment

The developers of decentralized physical infrastructure protocol (DePIN) Andrena have announced that the Solana-based project, which aims to provide decentralized internet services, has successfully closed a Series A funding round. The company raised $18 million in a fundraising round led by Dragonfly.

Other participants in the round included CMT Digital, Castle Island Ventures, Wintermute Ventures, 6th Man Ventures, and ParaFi. The round is structured as a simple SAFE with a token option, Andrena co-founder Neil Chatterjee said. Andrena had originally planned to raise $5 million, he said.

The Series A round brings Andrena’s total raised to $38 million. Chatterjee declined to comment on the company’s valuation or whether there are any new board members. His company is developing DAWN (Decentralized Autonomous Wireless Network). The Solana-based DePIN protocol is designed to provide decentralized internet services.

“DAWN has been in development since last fall,” Chatterjee said. “It aims to do for the internet what solar panels did for electricity. In the same way that consumers own and generate their own electricity and sell the excess to the grid, there is now an opportunity to do the same for home and business internet.”

To implement DAWN, Andrena is collaborating with Princeton University professor Pramod Viswanath. He is also a core contributor to Sentient, an open-source AI development platform, along with Polygon co-founder Sandeep Nailwal and others.

Founded in 2016, Andrena has been providing internet services since 2019 in 10 US states, including New York, New Jersey, Texas, Tennessee, Florida, and Pennsylvania, using wireless equipment installed on hundreds of rooftops. The company now plans to gradually transition customers to blockchain.