Helius, a vertically integrated developer platform that helps crypto applications build on Solana, announced the close of its $9.5M Series A round this week. The round was led by Foundation Capital, with participation from Reciprocal Ventures, 6th Man Ventures, Chapter One, Propel, Balaji Srinivasan, Anatoly Yakovenko, Raj Gokal, and Kyle Samani, among other Solana ecosystem founders.
Solana is reputed in some circles to create friction for developers. Like other blockchains, scaling transactions and speed to meet growing demand has been a consistent challenge, and has forced developers to focus on building complex infrastructure and scaffolding rather than the applications themselves.
Founded during the 2022 crypto bear market by former Coinbase software engineer Mert Mumtaz and former Amazon Web Services software engineers Liam Vovk and Nicolas Pennie, Helius offers a suite of tools that allow developers to build their applications on Solana. By eliminating the challenges presented by Solana’s immense scale, Helius said it enables developers to concentrate on enhancing user experience without needing to grapple with the intricacies of lower-level blockchain integrations, costly and unreliable RPC nodes, complex data streaming methods, and difficult on-chain indexing.
“The biggest criticism of crypto to date has been the lack of useful applications that benefit everyday people,” Mumtaz said. “Most of the focus has been on speculation instead of tangible things producing real value. To change this, we need to make it as simple as possible for developers to build apps that are cheap, fast, and scalable.”
“And this is the mission of Helius. We simplify and enhance the experience for developers on the highest-performing chain—Solana—by giving them the platform they need to build the best possible dApps in crypto. With our world-class team and investors, we are excited to advance our mission and help increase the probability of a crypto future.”
“Most infrastructure providers in crypto build horizontally across chains and simply add an RPC and move on to a new chain,” Vovk added. “As we’ve learned, this approach often results in poorly built dApps and underperforming chains. Our team at Helius is committed to doubling down on Solana and vertically integrating through the entire stack, from the validator plugins all the way up to open-source developer SDKs. In this way, we are effectively removing barriers for forward-thinking developers and shaping the future of Web3.”
Helius will use its Series A funding to hire low-level systems and backend engineers. It will also use the capital to enhance its deep technical stack to help further its mission of eliminating complexities and improving the entire Solana network from the bottom up.
“We are proud of Helius’ evolution and our ability to drive value for the Solana ecosystem,” Pennie said. “During a challenging time in the crypto world with the FTX collapse, Helius has been a catalyst for growth and development across the space.”
“As one of Solana’s earliest venture investors back in the spring of 2018, we couldn’t be more thrilled to lead Helius’ Series A financing and partner with Mert, Liam, and Nick,” Foundation Capital general partner Steve Vassallo said. “This is a team that has been forged in the fire—intensely smart, fearless, and deeply connected to the purpose of accelerating the adoption of truly useful crypto applications.”
“Helius has been committed to the Solana ecosystem since day one, and I believe that shows through in the quality of its products and its rapid growth,” Reciprocal Ventures partner Craig Burel said. “Mert, Liam, and Nick have proven to be some of the foremost thought leaders and technical developers within the entire blockchain ecosystem, and we’re incredibly excited to double down on the Helius team as they continue to drive and expand application development on Solana.”