Singapore, Singapore, April 3, 2024, Chainwire
Bitlayer Labs, the first Bitcoin Layer 2 solution based on BitVM, announced a $5 million funding round led by Framework Ventures and ABCDE Capital, with participation from StarkWare, OKX Ventures, Alliance DAO, UTXO Management, Aometric Capital and many others. This announcement comes as Bitlayer prepares to launch its Ready Player One open incentive program, inviting developers around the world to augment, improve and expand the protocol.
Bitlayer Labs, the developer of the Bitcoin Layer 2 protocol Bit layertoday announced the closing of a $5 million seed funding round at a valuation of $80 million, leading to a vision to become the computational layer of Bitcoin.
Investors and ecosystem partners
Blockchain-based venture capital firms Framework Ventures and ABCDE Capital led the round, with participation from StarkWare, OKX Ventures, Alliance DAO, UTXO Management, Aometric Capital, Kenetic Capital, Kestrel, Global Coin Research, Pivot Global and Web3Port. Many other incredible investors added value to the seed round.
Prominent angel investors including Messari CEO Ryan Selkis, Messari Co-Founder Dan McArdle, Asymmetric Capital Founder Dan Held, Hacken CEO Dyma, Sky Mavis CEO Trung and Andy, and Loi Luu , founder of Kyber Network, among others, joined the capitalization of the round.
Bitlayer's seed round has received considerable value-added support from ecosystem partners including Hacken, AWS Cloud, Ankr, Polyhedra, Babylon, Particle Network, Meson, Nubit, BitSmiley, TokenPocket, Xverse , Flash Protocol, Umoja.xyz, RunesTerminal, and more.
The Bitlayer Network
Bitlayer is the first Bitcoin Layer 2 network based on BitVM, providing Bitcoin-equivalent security and Turing completeness. The protocol aims to create a more scalable and interconnected Bitcoin ecosystem.
Obtaining new capital strengthens Bitlayer's lead by paving the way for more use cases of Bitcoin Layer 2, a race that will propel Bitcoin to prevail over other blockchains in terms of size, scalability and of security. The fund will also enable Bitlayer to grow its team by recruiting across business development and engineering faculties to support global expansion efforts.
Investment firms are becoming increasingly bullish on the Bitcoin ecosystem as Bitlayer rapidly gains prominence, attracting industry attention.
Investor Notes
Roy Learner, Partner at Framework Ventures, spoke about increasing Bitlayer with BitVM: “We are excited to support Bitlayer as they launch the first Bitcoin Layer 2 network based on BitVM. When it comes to trade-offs, BitVM seemed to us to be the most practical approach to bring scalability and expressiveness to the BTC ecosystem without sacrificing security. With over $1 billion of global wealth looking to productively use their BTC, Bitlayer is opening up the design space to introduce new DeFi use cases and applications. Led by a team of OGs, we were impressed by Kevin and Charlie's blend of deep technical knowledge and rich crypto experience and are excited to partner with them as they realize their vision of making Bitcoin a more productive asset.
Qiao Wang, co-founder of Alliance DAO, highlighted the future of Bitlayer and Bitcoin L2 in the emerging era: “I have spent the vast majority of my intellectual, social and financial capital in the Ethereum ecosystem over the past of the last decade, but deep down I have always been a Bitcoiner. The ability to improve the expressiveness and scalability of Bitcoin through L2s such as Bitlayer is the most exciting moment in Bitcoin history. Indeed, more than $1 billion in wealth is stored on Bitcoin and holders would like to do something productive with it. Greater expressiveness and scalability enable this. Bitlayer is one of the most experienced, passionate and technically proficient teams solving this problem.
In the midst of Bitlayer's build, co-founder Charlie Hu shared his thoughts on the protocol's milestone: “This support signifies investors' and builders' confidence in Bitlayer and the team, and demonstrates strong support for the Bitcoin ecosystem and the future of Bitcoin. DeFi as a whole.
Bitlayer is venturing into the future of Bitcoin with new capital, anticipating a rush of development activity and investor interest in the Bitcoin Layer 2 space.
“Bitlayer is dedicated to bringing super scalability to the Bitcoin ecosystem, with hundreds of millions of potential users as an addressable market,” said Kevin He, co-founder of Bitlayer. “We created the best, easiest-to-use scalability product to provide users with better fee rates and faster actions, all built on Bitcoin's foundation of security.”
As the Bitcoin halving event approaches, the need for a robust Bitcoin ecosystem becomes more important than ever. Bitlayer's rigorous design and rigorous security audits in preparation for public mainnet launch prepare the protocol for a thriving builder ecosystem. Mainnet will launch on April 5, with more milestones coming soon in the project's development pipeline.
Ready Player One – Ecosystem Incentive Program
To accelerate ecosystem development and incentivize projects to deploy on the Bitlayer mainnet, Bitlayer is launching a series of ecosystem incentive programs, starting with the first event, Ready Player One.
The campaign is an open incentive program designed to distribute token rewards worth over $50 million to protocols and teams that deploy on the Bitlayer mainnet and demonstrate exceptional performance. Bitlayer's growth is accelerating, prompting strong projects to join its ecosystem to grow the protocol exponentially.
Bitlayer is committed to providing comprehensive ecosystem support for all projects, offering the following resources to builders:
- Potential investment from the foundation and institutions
- Initial liquidity support
- Comprehensive product development resources
- Mentoring and pitching opportunities with leading incubators
- Support from the Bitcoin community and OGs
- Collaboration and co-creation of ecosystems
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About Bitlayer
Bit layer is the first Bitcoin Layer 2 network based on BitVM, providing Bitcoin-equivalent security and Turing completeness. Bitlayer is committed to becoming the computational layer for Bitcoin. It introduces ultra-scalability and inherits L1 security from Bitcoin, providing users with high throughput and low-cost transaction experience.
Learn more about Bitlayer:
Website | Twitter | Discord | AVERAGE | GitHub
Contact
Digital Marketing Manager
Sky Harris
Bit layer
(email protected)