Blockchain startup Layer N has raised $5 million in a seed round led by venture capital firm Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund and decentralized investment group dao5.
1/ We’re incredibly excited to announce our $5M seed round led by @foundersfund and @daofivealongside other major funds and angels.
This round marks our first milestone towards building Ethereum’s financial superlayer.https://t.co/yvXQLpP6qT
— Layer N 🔲 (📍Singapore) (@LayerN_Official) September 13, 2023
Other participants include Kraken Ventures, Amber Group, SALT and a number of private investors.
For Founders Fund, the Layer N crypto project marks its second investment in the industry after hiring Joey Krug, former co-chief investment officer of Pantera Capital, as a new partner in April.
Peter Thiel’s firm contributed $1.8 million of the total. The circle also took part in financing the project as a business angel.
The startup is developing a second-layer blockchain based on Ethereum, aimed at scaling decentralized financial applications.
According to Krug, the long-term goal of Layer N is to allow centralized exchanges like Binance and Coinbase to create non-custodial offerings on the L2 network.
This is intended to solve the problem of declining user confidence in CEX, which arose after the collapse of FTX. According to the investor, the way out of the situation is by launching decentralized versions based on the Layer N solution with an interface familiar to clients from the largest industry players.
In November 2022, the startup announced it had raised funds from FTX Ventures shortly before the group filed for bankruptcy. The team planned to build their blockchain based on Solana.
Layer N co-founder Dima Romanov said that the capital was never used, and the team decided to move to the Ethereum ecosystem. The reason was the realization that most institutions and liquidity providers are targeting this network, he commented.
Let’s remember that in the second quarter, Web3 startups attracted about $1.8 billion in venture funding – a figure decreased by 76% compared to the same period in 2022.
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