Ankr

Ankr

Chandler Song and Ryan Fang launched Ankr in 2017 after experimenting with distributed computing at UC Berkeley. The founding team met through the university’s blockchain innovation accelerator and built the idea around monetizing spare server resources. Early backing from Berkeley’s Haas School of Business provided the project’s first institutional grant before the firm relocated its primary operations to San Francisco. Ankr operates a decentralized infrastructure platform that provides remote procedure call node services, liquid staking, and enterprise blockchain tooling. The protocol supports multiple layer-1 and layer-2 networks — publicly documented integrations include Binance Smart Chain, Polygon, Avalanche, and Fantom. The firm deploys capital into validator infrastructure and protocol development rather than a traditional venture portfolio. In 2021, Ankr introduced its native liquid staking token, which allows users to stake ETH and other proof-of-stake assets while retaining liquidity. Geographic coverage spans North America, East Asia, and crypto-friendly jurisdictions such as Gibraltar. The team maintains operational hubs in San Francisco, Seoul, and Hong Kong. Ankr also offers a bare-metal deployment service that expanded its enterprise client base beyond purely crypto-native users. The main team remains relatively lean compared to centralized cloud-native competitors. The firm does not publicly disclose headcount or balance-sheet deployment figures. Ankr is structurally distinct from classic cloud providers by running its node network across a permissionless set of independent providers. Unlike centralized blockchain infrastructure firms that operate their own data centers, Ankr coordinates third-party node operators through a single interface. This architecture makes the platform harder to deplatform and distributes infrastructure risk across many independent operators.