In this Forbes Poland interview, RedStone co-founder and COO Marcin Kaźmierczak offers a clear explanation of what blockchain oracles do, how RedStone is different from its global competitors, and why Poland has become an unexpected hub for cutting-edge crypto infrastructure. Readers will also get insight into the company’s rapid growth, its unique business model, and what it takes to build resilient tech in a volatile industry.
Key Highlights:
- RedStone delivers real-world data to blockchains, acting like a Bloomberg Terminal for crypto – but faster, cheaper, and more scalable.
- Now supporting 110+ blockchains and securing $8B+ in assets, RedStone is on track to surpass Pyth and challenge Chainlink’s dominance.
- Built by a top-tier dev team from Poland, the startup leverages tight in-person collaboration and technical excellence to outpace global rivals.
- Raised $22M in total funding, including a $15M Series A in 2024, to fuel product innovation and hedge against crypto market volatility.
- Launched the RED token to secure its oracle network and unlock a decentralized equivalent of a public listing, open 24/7 on Ethereum.
FORBES: Einstein once said that if you can’t explain something simply, you don’t understand it well enough. So, how would you explain RedStone to a child?
MARCIN KAZMIERCZAK: When I talk to people in finance, I usually say that RedStone is like the Bloomberg Terminal — but for the crypto world. To explain it to a child, though, I’d first need to start with the basics: what a blockchain is, or even more simply, how things like banks and credit cards work.
Let’s assume this is a slightly older child who is familiar with the Internet and banks.
In that case, I’d explain that the financial systems we use today were built a long time ago, which makes them slow and overly complicated. Blockchain offers a new kind of system — one that isn’t tied to any single country or currency. It’s global and open, like the internet, pizza, or memes. But for blockchains to work properly, they need real-world information, like the current exchange rate between the złoty and the dollar. That’s where RedStone comes in: we provide the data that blockchains need to function.
You create products that are called oracles. We have Larry Ellison’s Oracle, we have the Oracle of Omaha, Warren Buffett, and we had an oracle in “The Matrix”. What makes the Polish oracle, RedStone, stand out?
Three things set us apart. First, our oracle is fully scalable — it grows alongside our customers and the blockchain networks they use, without driving up costs exponentially. That makes it suitable for a wide range of use cases. Second, it’s built on technical excellence. Our team is made up of top-tier engineers, and for the developers who integrate our solutions, that matters more than flashy marketing. And third, we’re proudly based in Poland, with about 80% of our team here. In a world of remote work and decentralization, being able to meet in person — whether it’s a Thursday afternoon over pizza and beer or a team trip to Masuria — gives us a real edge.
You also have Polish founders – you, Jakub Wojciechowski, and Alex Suvorov, a Belarusian with a Polish passport who has been associated with our country for years. How did it happen that you built this business together?
We met in 2018, when the Polish blockchain community was still in its infancy. Alex and I were in college, and Kuba lived in London. He has been closely watching the Ethereum ecosystem emerge since 2015, so he knows it inside and out. He is a true engineer who, at some point, noticed the inefficiencies of Chainlink, the largest player on the blockchain oracle market, including the fact that its architecture was not adapted to the growing crypto market. That is why in 2020 Kuba started working on his own solution, and shortly afterwards he invited Alex and me to the project to support it in the engineering and business parts, respectively. In 2021, we obtained the first round of financing, which helped us get started. A year later, another seed round, thanks to which we were able to build the first version of the system, and in January 2023, we carried out the first commercial implementation.
And today, you are the third power in the world.
That’s right. The first in terms of the number of implementations is still Chainlink, and the second is Pyth, which we have a chance to surpass this year. We have over 160 B2B clients, we secure assets worth over $8 billion, and we support 109 blockchains – while Chainlink, which is valued at $13 billion, only supports 25. That gap shows just how much potential RedStone has to continue scaling.
And who are your customers? Are they companies born in the Web3 world or those entering it?
At the moment, we have several groups of clients. The first – and at the same time the largest, accounting for about 70% of our business – are all kinds of blockchains, such as Solana or Sui, to which we provide the data necessary for their operation. The second group is made up of issuers of assets in the crypto world, such as EtherFi or Lido, who need oracles to track how their asset value changes over time, because, for example, they are linked to US Treasury bonds. The third are decentralized applications like Compound, Pendle, or Morpho, i.e., financial products known from traditional finance, but transferred to the blockchain. And now the fourth group is emerging, i.e., traditional businesses that are entering the crypto world, such as BlackRock – a few months ago, we became the official oracle of its first blockchain fund. This shift is happening in part due to regulatory changes introduced under Donald Trump, who has been notably supportive of crypto initiatives, even launching his own stablecoin, USD1. It’s less about aligning with him politically and more about the fact that his administration’s policies have made the financial landscape more open to blockchain-based solutions. As more of these projects emerge, they all share one thing in common: the need for reliable, real-world data — and that’s exactly what we provide.
RedStone has earned strong investor confidence, raising a total of $22 million to date, including a $15 million Series A round in 2024. But given your steady organic growth and profitability (with PLN 3.7 million in revenue and PLN 208 thousand in net profit last year), why do you still need external funding?
There are two main reasons. First, we need capital for R&D — to experiment, innovate, and develop new products. Second, around 95% of our clients are in the crypto space, which is highly cyclical. In a bear market, people start predicting the end of crypto, and companies cut spending. Then the bull market returns, and suddenly the same people believe blockchain will change the world in three months, and start investing aggressively. We see this pattern clearly in the data. That’s why, as a responsible company, we maintain a financial cushion to stay resilient during market swings and keep building for the long term.
A few months ago, you released your own token. Currently, your company is valued at around PLN 365 million. How does this move affect the future of RedStone and your development scenarios?
The RED token has several functions. On the one hand, it is a security mechanism for our oracle. In simple terms, it works like this: entities providing us with data become owners of our cryptocurrency and then stake it, i.e., lock it in the wallet. If they provide incorrect data, they will receive a penalty – their tokens will be distributed to other members of our system. On the other hand, it is simply the equivalent of a traditional IPO – only instead of shares on a specific stock exchange, shareholders have tokens in the ERC-20 standard on Ethereum, available globally 24/7. In the future, someone may buy them out, but they may just as well remain in the hands of the Swiss issuer.
And you, Jakub and Alex, what are your plans? Do you want to develop RedStone for as long as possible, or after some time, capitalize your shares and do something else?
We’re in a really strong position right now. Blockchain is gaining serious momentum, and we have the skills, experience, and a 40-person team that allows us to build some of the most innovative products in the space. Our short-term goal is to overtake Pyth by the end of this year, and by 2027 or 2028, catch up with Chainlink to become the leading oracle globally. We’ve got a lot of ideas to get there — one example is RedStone Bolt, the fastest oracle in the world. In a market where bots dominate and every millisecond matters, speed is a huge advantage.
Beyond that, we see RedStone as a data pipeline. That opens the door to delivering clean, secure data not just to blockchains, but also to traditional financial institutions that will inevitably move into the crypto space. There’s a lot of room to grow, and we’re fully committed to it. We also want to show that a company from Poland can build world-class, global products — no inferiority complex needed. So no, we’re not going anywhere.
Source: Forbes Poland.
