LayerZero Labs, the team behind the messaging protocol LayerZero, announced the closing of a $120 million Series B funding round, valuing the company at $3 billion.
The investment round “saw participation from 33 investors, including a16z crypto, BOND, Christie’s, Circle Ventures, OpenSea Ventures, Samsung Next, and Sequoia Capital, amongst others.”
LayerZero is “a messaging protocol that allows for interoperability and facilitates seamless cross-chain messaging across countless blockchains.”
It provides “the underlying infrastructure needed for decentralized applications (dApps) to live across multiple blockchains.” By leveraging LayerZero, developers can “create projects that exist across multiple blockchains without the need for an intermediary to facilitate cross-chain interactions.”
The funds from this round will “play an integral role in escalating LayerZero’s continued growth and will be leveraged to increase the headcount at LayerZero Labs as well as deepen its presence in the APAC region.”
This expansion will “allow LayerZero to further cement its presence as the premier messaging protocol and globally promote the development of the digital asset ecosystem.”
Ryan Zarick, Co-Founder and CTO of LayerZero Labs, commented:
“Imagine a future where a single user-facing application can harness the speed of Solana, the security of Ethereum, and the cheap file storage of Arweave, while also being fully abstracted to the user. This is our vision, made possible by the LayerZero protocol that seamlessly connects all blockchains and enables chain-agnostic applications to be built across various blockchains to create a best-in-class user experience. The days of choosing one chain to build on are over; the future is omnichain applications.”
In the first year since its launch, LayerZero’s platform has “experienced exponential growth.”
It facilitated over two million messages “being relayed across 30+ chains, secured over $7 billion in Total Value Locked (TVL), and processed more than $6 billion in transactional volume.”
LayerZero has “seen more than 30,000 contracts deployed on its testnet and 3,500 on its mainnet, with 10,000+ unique applications and hundreds of thousands of unique end users.”
LayerZero Labs has “received backing from some of the strongest crypto-focused companies in the entire world, including Binance, Blockdaemon, Christie’s, Circle Ventures, Coinbase, OpenSea Ventures, and many more.”
The LayerZero protocol is “utilized by some of crypto’s largest on-chain applications, including the majority of the world’s largest decentralized exchanges (DEXs), such as PancakeSwap, Sushiswap, TraderJoe, and Uniswap.”
Zarick concluded:
“Before the advent of the internet, computers existed in fragmented and disconnected data centers, much like many blockchains today. LayerZero is revolutionizing blockchains by creating one unified ecosystem, like the internet, that connects each blockchain’s developers and user community. The core principles of the LayerZero protocol are permissionless, censorship-resistant, and immutable. During this latest round, we sought out investors who shared these values and our vision of a fully connected blockchain world. We are excited to work alongside them and our community to scale the LayerZero protocol and connect all blockchains everywhere.”