British Virgin Islands-registered decentralised exchange (DEX) operator 1inch Network secured $175m yesterday in a series B round led by crypto financial services provider Amber Group.
Some 50 investors took part in the round, including cryptocurrency trading and storage platform Gemini’s Frontier Fund and quantitative trading firms Alameda Research and Jane Street Capital, in addition to VanEck, Fenbushi Capital, Celsius Capital, Nexo Capital and Tribe Capital.
Founded in 2020, 1inch Network runs a DEX aggregation platform that enables users to identify crypto deals across various protocols with competitive rates. It said it has now been responsible for over $70bn in trades on the Ethereum network.
The company will use the funding to help US and Europe-based traditional financial services providers enter the decentralised finance (DeFi) ecosystem, create additional protocols, ramp up its blockchain-based assets and increase headcount.
Pantera Capital led a $12m round for 1inch Network in December 2020, investing alongside ParaFi Capital, Nima Capital, LauncHub Ventures, Spark Capital, Gumi Cryptos, Blockchain Capital and individuals Josh Hannah, Kain Warwick and Alexander Pack.
1inch Network had previously closed a $2.8m round four months earlier led by Binance Labs, the strategic investment arm of cryptocurrency exchange Binance.
The seed round was backed by Galaxy Digital, Greenfield One, Libertus Capital, Dragonfly Capital, FTX, IOSG, Launchub Ventures, Divergence Ventures, Loi Luu and Illia Polosukhin.
Sergej Kunz, co-founder of 1inch Network, said: “While continuing to keep the existing DeFi audience happy by delivering state-of-the-art products, 1inch also aims to become a gateway for institutions that want to be part of the DeFi space.”
