Points (PTS), a blockchain startup seeking to build a credit scoring protocol, has raised $8 million in a seed funding round from a number of traditional and blockchain venture capital including DHVC, Cherubic Ventures, Ce Yuan, Ontology Foundation, Nest.Bio Ventures, and Zhong Cheng Xin Credit Technology.

Founded in 2017, Points seeks to leverage blockchain technology and artificial intelligence (AI) to develop credit scoring protocol that will allow trustless entities (banks, institutions, tech companies, consumers, etc) to participate in sharing their proprietary data. It aims to build a credit scoring protocol on top of the recently-launched Ontology blockchain, CoinDesk reported.

Points intends to use the new funding to expand its engineering team in order to accelerate the development of blockchain-based know-your-customer (KYC) and credit scoring applications.

The company has announced a “credit collaboration network,” which would enable “accurate credit scores” and help facilitate financial inclusion. It will improve access to credit for the unbanked or underserved population by reducing the risk to banks and other credit institutions that otherwise may not offer loans to these high-risk clients.

Points further said that it has developed the only market-ready blockchain-based network that can meet the technological requirements of leading banks and credit institutions, adding that it is capable of analyzing and serving credit scores within one second and at 10,000 Transactions Per Second (TPS).

"With the support of our VCs and partners, we're excited to be able to launch the first and most accurate market-ready blockchain-based credit network," said Sarah Zhang, Founder of Points. "Our vision is to serve the underrepresented community, and with blockchain as a core technology for Points, we're able to incentivize partners to participate in risk-free data sharing, which combined with AI, means truly accurate credit scores."

Furthermore, Points announced its data sharing partnership with China's leading credit rating agencies, Zhong Cheng Xin Credit Technology Ltd., and Teleinfo, owned by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT). It said that these partnerships will provide it with prodigious amounts of data – nearly 500 million credit profiles and 1 billion identity profiles – which is required for any AI to achieve a high-degree of accuracy.

"Among the few practical use cases for blockchain technology, Points has demonstrated a groundbreaking solution with its data collaboration protocol that can contribute to a solution for the world's credit problems for the unbanked, but this is just the beginning," said Bin Zhang, CEO and Chairman of the Board at Zhong Cheng Xin Credit Technology Ltd. and advisor of Points.