Mash, a payments infrastructure company that leverages Bitcoin’s Lightning Network, has completed a $6 million seed funding round co-led by Castle Island Ventures and Whitecap Venture Partners, according to a press release sent to Bitcoin Magazine.
Mash leverages a new “pay-as-you-enjoy” usage-based model which allows consumers to stream bitcoin directly to the creator of the content they want to enjoy.
“Online content monetization is deeply broken today,” said Nic Carter, general partner at Castle Island Ventures, who joins Mash’s board of directors following the funding. “As a scalable, data-efficient, and high-granularity system, Bitcoin’s Lightning Network is uniquely suited to solving this problem, and Mash employs it wonderfully.”
Mash seeks to remonetize the internet by eliminating initial barriers preventing content consumption on applications. It aims to accomplish this goal by removing standard subscription fees, ad revenue schemes that collect data and aggregators that censor, restrict and control platforms in favor of bitcoin.
Usage-based revenue models can allow creators, builders, developers and others with projects that may not possess the know-how to support a Bitcoin ecosystem. This enables users to enjoy and browse content in a way that offers consumers the ability to choose how they spend their time and money within the application.
Mash boasts previews – the ability to try content before choosing to spend bitcoin to consume it. Customers can utilize a digital wallet native to the application, which can be funded with a credit card or with external bitcoin funds, to opt into an auto-pay function to prevent the interruption of content as well as spending controls to prevent overspending.
“Bitcoin and Lightning are transformative, redefining money on a global scale, creating the perfect opportunity for us to change the fabric of all online experiences and unlock fundamentally new business models that reward and incentivize the proliferation of quality, trusted and high-value experiences,” said Jared Nusinoff, founder and CEO of Mash.
Mash intends to use the funds raised for building out and commercializing its Bitcoin and Lightning Network payments platform.