As blockchain infrastructure startups heat up, industry fervor brings in more developers and users to an area that still feels young despite heavy institutional embrace for crypto space in 2021.Tenderly is the latest crypto startup to attract venture capitalists' attention. It provides a platform that allows Ethereum developers to test and monitor the smart contracts which power their decentralized apps. Andrej Bencic, CEO of Tenderly, tells TechCrunch that his startup closed a $15.3million Series A funding round. This was led by Accel and included additional participation from existing investors. Point Nine Capital led a seed round of $3.3 million for the Belgrade startup earlier in the year.To date, the startups have aimed to ensure that fledgling blockchain developers don't find out about contract errors after users complain. Instead, they allow users to spot these issues proactively. Tenderly is currently using the Visual Debugger to assist developers in building Ethereum networks. However, Tenderly plans to expand its toolkit to allow more developers to use it without having to deal with all the problems and irregularities.TechCrunch's Bencic says that Tenderly has been a solution for one of our problems since its inception. We wanted it to be as simple as possible to extract and observe information from Ethereum and other networks.Bencic hopes that the company's product will help developers get their products to market faster without compromising on usability.Tenderlys' customers are mainly small startups that want to tap into blockchain-based computing and decentralized finance. Tenderly is a small startup with a team of 14 people based in Serbia. Bencic claims that the funding will allow Tenderly to expand its global reach and hire engineers and business people in other regions.The rise in cryptocurrency prices has historically been closely linked to developer uptake in blockchain. There is concern that the downward-trending price corrections of bitcoin and Ethereum will result in less stability for developers who embrace blockchain. However, volatility is not uncommon in the crypto world. Many developers have discovered that it is part of the experience to ride its ups and downs.Tenderly was built in the bear market. We found that people who are excited about tech, regardless of the price, are still excited about it, Bencic said.
