Decentralized storage platform Cumulus Encrypted Storage System (CESS) raised approximately $8 million from more than 13 venture capital firms, according to a Dec. 28 announcement. The funds will be used to “drive technological advancements, expand global operations, and strengthen CESS’s position in the decentralized infrastructure sector,” a CESS representative told Cointelegraph.

Substats CESS block explorer. Source: CESS

According to its documents, CESS is both a blockchain network and a decentralized storage system. It allows files to be stored on multiple nodes and identified by their hash. It contains four components, or “layers” — blockchain, data storage, content distribution and application layer. It uses a variety of cryptographic protocols to help ensure that data stays permanent, including proof-of-reduplication-and-recovery and multi-format data confirmation. CESS aims to be used in large-scale commercial applications.

According to the announcement, HTX Ventures, Infinity Ventures Crypto, DWF Labs, Mentha Partners, Vespertine Capital, Web3 Foundation, Singchain Investment, 7 O’Clock Capital, SolrDAO, FishDAO, OneBlock+, Winkrypto and Polkadot Ecology Research Institute participated in the raise.

CESS co-founder and chairman Nicholas Zaldastani claimed that the funds will be used to further develop the protocol:

“This funding will enable us to continue our mission of providing the next-gen of global decentralized data services for Web3, which includes support for large-scale commercial use cases that require high-end security, performance, storage, CDN, high-frequency trading and millisecond data retrieval.”

Demand for decentralized storage space has grown rapidly over the course of 2023. Filecoin saw its utilization reach more than 7% in the second quarter, and Arweave’s transaction volume surged by over 717% over the course of the year, according to data from blockchain analytics platform ViewBlock. CESS claims that its protocol can be used in a variety of future applications, including “Metaverse, NFT, DeFi, streaming media, social media, gaming and real-world assets.”