Canada-based blockchain technology developer LayerZero Labs secured $135m yesterday in a funding round co-led by cryptocurrency exchange FTX’s corporate venturing unit, FTX Ventures, at a valuation of $1bn.
The round was co-led with Sequoia Capital and Andreessen Horowitz and included cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase, payment processor PayPal, blockchain technology developer Uniswap Labs, Tiger Global Management and unnamed others. Coinbase and PayPal took part through respective subsidiaries Coinbase Ventures and PayPal Ventures.
Founded in 2021, LayerZero Labs is the creator of an interoperability protocol called LayerZero that allows decentralised apps to operate across multiple blockchains.
Areas in which those apps operate include games, media and finance, enabling users to transfer assets such as non-fungible tokens to other blockchains, in contrast to the fragmented networks that exist in the absence of protocols, to bridge them.
The company recently launched a cross-chain liquidity transfer protocol dubbed Stargate which enables digital assets to be moved across chains. It will use the funding to boost the development of its cross-chain apps.
Cryptocurrency exchange Binance and Multicoin Capital co-led LayerZero Lab’s $6m series A round in September 2021, investing with cryptocurrency research firm Delphi Digital, Sino Global Capital, Defiance, Robot Ventures, Hypersphere Ventures, Spartan, Protocol Ventures and Gen Block Capital
LayerZero Labs co-founder and CEO Bryan Pellegrino said: “This round is a massive step forward for LayerZero Labs and the unfolding interoperability landscape. We have brought some of the best and most well-respected entities in the world together to accomplish the same goal: create the generic messaging layer that underpins all interoperability between blockchains.”
