deBridge announces $5.5m fundraising five months after winning the Chainlink hackathon
deBridge, a cross-chain interoperability and liquidity transfer protocol, is delighted to announce the closing of a $5.5 million funding round to bring the new era of cross-chain interoperability to areas of DeFi, NFTs, and more.
We are thankful to have the support and backing from our great partners including lead strategic partner ParaFi. The round also saw participation from Animoca Brands, Huobi Ventures, Lemniscap, Crypto.com Capital, MGNR, IOSG, Fundamental Labs, Krypital Group, bitScale, DFG, Chorus, SkyVision Capital, The LAO, GSR, AngelDAO, NeptuneDAO, D64, Axia8 Ventures, Gabby Dizon, Santiago R. Santos, and others.
deBridge was started as the team experienced problems with cross-chain interoperability and swaps themselves, and there was no unified and convenient solution. The project itself commenced during the Chainlink Spring 2021 Hackathon where the team took the grand prize among more than 140 projects worldwide in various areas of the blockchain ecosystem.
deBridge will use the raised capital to build an infrastructure and decentralized service that allows any protocols to expand to any blockchain networks to achieve greater scalability while seamlessly interconnecting protocol components in different ecosystems. The first step will be our mainnet launch which will support Ethereum, BSC, HECO, Polygon, and Arbitrum. The first phase of the protocol will enable projects and users to perform cross-chain swaps and bridging and to start integrating with or building on top of deBridge.
We’re looking forward to working with our fantastic investors and long-term supporters to facilitate cross-chain interoperability in the blockchain ecosystem and to allow projects and users to build great products and primitives, including cross-chain composability of smart contracts and bridging of any arbitrary asset including your favorite NFTs.
We also want to thank our community for all the support and feedback thus far. We aim to build a protocol that will enable a vast range of possibilities for projects and developers in the ecosystem, and we want to do this with our community. Moreover, we’re always looking for great talent that will join us on this journey. If you’re interested to join deBridge and become part of the cross-chain ecosystem, please feel free to reach out to us on Telegram/Discord or to have a look at some of our current job openings here.
Nick Chong, Investment Analyst at ParaFi Capital:
As DeFi becomes a multi-chain phenomenon, decentralized bridges that can transfer value between distinct ecosystems will become increasingly important. We are excited to support the deBridge team as they build a product that enables the movement of capital between Ethereum, Arbitrum, and beyond.
Roderik van der Graaf, Managing Partner at Lemniscap
With the advent of a mature multi-blockchain environment, a cohesive web for cross-chain communication has become not only a need, but a necessity. Due to its technically sophisticated nature, the ever-evolving notion of “interoperability” is still seen as one of the toughest nuts to crack in the blockchain world. We believe that Alex and the deBridge team have what it takes to tackle the ecosystem fragmentation and bring us closer to a user-friendly and efficient multichain vision as the crypto industry moves towards mainstream adoption.
Xinshu Dong, Partner at IOSG Ventures:
We are fortunate to be witness to a thriving multi-chain ecosystem where the best of the best technologies are increasingly integrated to better serve users and applications. Along that growth trajectory, efficient cross-chain solutions such as deBridge are in great demand. We have been supporting their mission since early days and look forward to it becoming a key enabler for more liquid asset movements across different blockchains.
Xie Jinbin, Investment Manager at Huobi Ventures:
deBridge is not only about the bridges the team enables, but also about the cross-chain interoperability features between blockchains, protocols, and applications. This empowers assets of different layers to enjoy smooth and seamless transfers. Further, their product iteration speed is much faster and it’s all thanks to their well-developed product design and architecture. Overall, we were highly intrigued by the deBridge team, their coding capabilities, and their rigorous focus on security measures.
About deBridge
deBridge is a cross-chain interoperability and liquidity transfer protocol that allows decentralized transfer of assets between various blockchains. deBridge protocol is an infrastructure platform and hooking service for:
- Cross-chain composability of smart contracts
- Cross-chain swaps
- Bridging of any arbitrary asset and data
- Interoperability and bridging of NFTs