LayerZero is now worth a billion dollars
LayerZero Labsthe parent company of interoperability protocol smart contract company LayerZero has announced that it has raised $135 million in a Series A+ fundraising.
The round was led by big names in investing like a16z, Sequoia Capital and FTX Venturesthe FTX platform fund that was launched at the start of 2022.
Other investors also participated, such as PayPal Ventures, Avalanche, Fantom, Coinbase Ventures, Tiger Global or Uniswap Labs.
This new capital injection thus enables the Canadian firm to pass the billion dollar valuation mark. Note that this funding is much larger than the previous two, which brought in $2 million in the seed round and $6.3 million in the first round of Series A.
Investors seem to have placed their trust in the interoperability enabled by LayerZero, in a context where cross-chain bridges continue to suffer from increasingly important hacks, as could develop michelle bailheinvestment partner at Sequoia Capital:
“We were convinced that the future was cross-chain, but the technology to access it was then insufficient – until we encountered LayerZero. »
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Interoperability as a backbone
LayerZero is defined as a structure for developers wishing to build applications using the mechanism of cross-chain interaction.
To this end, LayerZero has recently deployed Stargate, a cross-chain protocol already present on many recognized networks such as Ethereum (ETH), Avalanche (AVAX), Polygon (MATIC) or even Fantom (FTM).
Stargate currently allows the swapping of tokens and also offers solutions for liquidity pools as well as stablecoin farming. An STG token staking feature is also planned for the near future, which will allow obtaining veSTG governance tokens.
To get an idea of the reception of the project with its community, Stargate is already observing a $3.7 billion total value locked (TVL) in just 2 weeks.
LayerZero could therefore very quickly find a place of choice in the world of cross-chain protocols, an idea supported by Ramnik Arorapartner at FTX Ventures:
“LayerZero enables smart contracts from one blockchain to seamlessly and securely leverage another blockchain’s network, increasing the overall value of the blockchain ecosystem. His team is a rare combination of vision and technical execution. »
According to LayerZero’s Medium blog, the Solana (SOL), Terra (LUNA), Cosmos (ATOM), and Osmosis (OSMO) blockchains will also be compatible in the coming weeks. Full compatibility with the blockchain ecosystem is expected within 6-8 months.
? Read also: Helium Inc. raises $200 million and renames itself Nova Labs
Source: Forbes, Medium
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About the Author : Maximilien Prue
Passionate about the world of decentralized finance and the novelties brought by Web 3.0, I write articles for Cryptoast to help make the blockchain more accessible to everyone. Convinced that cryptocurrencies will change the future very soon.
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