StarkWare Industries, which is a blockchain startup based in Israel, has announced that they have received $30 million in venture capital from a group of investors that include Sequoia USA and Intel Capital. StarkWare began operations this year, and it has already developed a wide range of hardware and software applications utilizing blockchain technology. These applications include off-blockchain computation, fast transaction processing and transparency privacy. It also offers what it calls the STARK Protocol, which helps address a number of issues in blockchains, such as scalability and privacy. The $30 million in financing was led by a cryptocurrency hedge fund called Paradigm, which was founded by Fred Ehrsam, who himself was a co-founder of Coinbase. In addition to Paradigm, Intel and Sequoia, other investors participating in this round of funding included Atomico, Coinbase Ventures, Collaborative Fund, Consensys, DCVC, Multicoin Capital, Scalar Capital, Semantic Ventures and Wing. Previously this spring, the company received $6 million in seed funding from a group of investors that reported included industry leaders such as Vitalik Buterin, Arthur Breitman, Da Hongfei, Bitmain and a number of others. Sequoia, which is a legendary Silicon Valley venture capital firm that has backed companies that have more than a trillion dollars in market value, has invested in a number of cryptocurrency and blockchain startups this past year. This includes a San Francisco-based cryptocurrency hedge fund called MetaStable Capital and Polychain Capital, which invests in blockchain companies through participating in various initial coin offerings (ICOs). This summer, Sequoia — along with many other companies — invested in a Chinese blockchain startup called Nervos Network, which is developing a solution that brings together a secure and public blockchain with an application chain. This is not the first time that Intel has been involved in blockchain technology. This past March, the tech giant filed a patent for a Bitcoin mining accelerator. This accelerator hopes to reduce the vast amount of electricity required to successfully mine Bitcoins. They hope to accomplish this by reducing the size of Bitcoin mining hardware and by also reducing the amount of energy necessary to power this equipment.