Velar Secures $3.5M to Build World’s First Perpetual DEX on Bitcoin
Velar has secured $3.5M in seed round to accelerate the product development of Velar Artha — the world’s first Decentralized Perpetual Derivatives Exchange (PerpDEX) on Bitcoin.
The round saw participation from leading investors including Black Edge Capital, CMS Holdings, Bitcoin Startup Lab, GBV, Cypher Capital, Trust Machines SPV, Samara Asset Group, Maple Block, Cogitent Ventures, and many more.
“We see DeFi on BTC as the dominant narrative of this cycle and Velar as one of the main players in this space. We’re thrilled to support a team and product that has the potential to revolutionize the Bitcoin industry and reshape Bitcoins value proposition to retail users”, Winston, Black Edge Capital.
Velar will use the funds to fast-track development of its flagship product Velar Artha — positioned to be the first-ever perpetual DEX on Bitcoin. Velar Artha will facilitate trading of perpetual derivatives in a trustless manner, with up to 20x leverage, using BTC as collateral in a non-custodial manner.
The product aims to unlock Bitcoin’s dormant liquidity for advanced DeFi use cases. Over $800 billion worth of BTC is currently unproductive, representing massive untapped capital that Velar’s PerpDEX can enable institutions and individuals to utilize productively.
“Velar’s successful seed round is a validation of our mission to make Proof-of-Work and Bitcoin the base layer of DeFi. Velar is set to redefine what’s possible, facilitating $800B worth of dormant liquidity to be used in DeFi; and we’re excited to invite the world to be a part of this groundbreaking journey,” said Mithil Thakore, Co-Founder and CEO of Velar.
Velar’s broader product suite includes a Uniswap v2-inspired AMM-based DEX for swaps and liquidity pools, yield generation tools, and a token launchpad for Bitcoin-based projects.
Velar Dharma, the foundational component of Velar’s decentralized ecosystem, will soon make its mainnet debut within the coming weeks. Serving as the platform for Velar’s product suite, Dharma Mainnet will provide core DeFi functionalities on Bitcoin.
“We are excited to support the adoption of DeFi on BTC. After witnessing the explosion of DeFi on ETH with the introduction of swapping, staking, and farming, we believe that Velar brings this same ensemble of DeFi products to the BTC space” added Eric, CMS Holdings.
The PerpDEX is slated to launch in Q2 2024 on Bitcoin Layer-2 protocol Stacks. Beyond these suites of products, Velar will also explore integration with other leading L2s and scaling solutions for Bitcoin.
“DeFi is the logical next step for Bitcoin. Introducing perps for Bitcoin and other assets that can be swapped in a decentralized way, and earn rewards will help unlock the $500B in untapped value on Bitcoin,” said Muneeb Ali, Co-Creator of Stacks. “This fundraise helps the team at Velar build a liquidity protocol that will be a major gateway for the usability being unlocked by sBTC on Bitcoin L2.”
In allowing DeFi activity natively on Bitcoin, Velar aims to establish the network as a viable base layer for the future of decentralized finance. Velar views the innovation potential of the Bitcoin protocol as largely untapped within DeFi.
Through core products like the PerpDEX and AMM DEX, Velar aims to extend Bitcoin’s capabilities in enabling key DeFi building blocks including swaps, liquidity pools, yield generation, and leverage trading.
In the words of Aravind Sathyanandham, Co-founder of Velar, “Bitcoin being a digital denominator of energy, is the most sound digital asset. Creating a circular Bitcoin economy and contributing towards a long term bitcoin security budget is an honor and duty that we uphold proudly at Velar.”
Originally published at https://blog.velar.co.
