New Startup Predicate Wants to Help Crypto Companies Adapt to Regulations

Since the publication of the Bitcoin white paper in 2008, blockchain has promised to create a new global payments network that would challenge incumbent

Two former Celo blockchain veterans are launching Predicate, a new startup that aims to help crypto companies adapt to regulations, which still determine how money – virtual or otherwise – can circulate around the world.

Predicate offers a service that it says can allow crypto applications to transparently implement the logic that decides whether a given transaction can be approved – a decision that is based on the complex infrastructure that underpins products from Netflix to Venmo. With $7 million in backing from top venture capital firms including Tribe and 1kx, Predicate is launching its product this week and plans to operate under the decentralized ethos of blockchain.

“How to connect blockchain technology to the rest of the economy?” said Nikhil Raghuveera, co-founder of Predicate, in an interview with Fortune. “We think there’s an opportunity to say we can actually simplify this.”

If you try to send $50,000 to someone via Venmo, the request probably won’t go through – a $10 fee won’t be a problem, though. The same goes for opening Netflix in a country where it is not present. In both cases, background applications fulfill what is called a precondition, which determines whether an action should occur or not.

Of course, blockchain operates in a different pattern than centralized businesses, where a single entity – and people – are in the middle of the activity. With blockchain applications, such as borrowing/lending protocols or prediction markets, actions are meant to be governed by code rather than humans. However, writing the code that serves as the basis can be tedious and expensive.

“All of them will probably have different types of pre-transaction rules and requirements,” said Raghuveera. “We provide the mechanism and infrastructure to achieve this seamlessly.”

Raghuveera has a political background, including serving as a senior fellow for the Atlantic Council think tank, and Predicate counts Michael Mosier, former acting director of the Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, as an advisor. One of blockchain’s thorniest issues has been maintaining the decentralized ideals of blockchain with the realities of anti-money laundering laws, the importance of which the Treasury Department has repeatedly stated.

Raghuveera and his co-founder, former JP Morgan software engineer Jesse Sawa, said the added value of Predicate would create a plug-and-play solution for blockchain applications that would allow them to implement prerequisites for transactions, such as the maintenance and creation of address blacklists, while always giving control of the policies to the body that governs the application, whether an individual, a company or a a decentralized autonomous organization.

Predicate will be available on any Ethereum or EVM compatible chain, with plans to expand to other blockchains. It is also working with restaurant network EigenLayer, whose token recently launched in early October, to develop a community of operators who deploy Predicate’s technology using a proof-of-stake system.

Raghuveera declined to talk about Predicate’s own plans to launch a token, although that is likely on the roadmap, given how it’s built and the need for an incentive mechanism to approve and reject tokens based on the preconditions defined by the Predicate user.

For now, Predicate will offer white glove services onboarding with new clients it onboards, charging transaction fees, although Raghuveera declined to provide the names of its first clients.

The company currently has six employees and plans to use the funding to hire ten more.