Multicoin Capital invests in Wormhole to enhance crypto interoperability
Rebeca Moen Apr 05, 2024 05:17
Multicoin Capital leads $225 million funding round for Wormhole, a leading multichain solution with over $41 billion assets and 30 chains, focusing on user experience and zero-knowledge verification technology.
Multicoin Capital, a prominent venture capital firm specializing in blockchain and cryptocurrency investments, has revealed its participation as a co-lead investor in a $225 million funding round for Wormhole, a key player in the multichain space. The funding round was completed late last year but has only been officially announced now, coinciding with the launch of Wormhole's native token, W token.
Wormhole is widely recognized for its full-stack interoperability platform, which goes beyond being just a bridge. It serves as a development platform that enables various applications across different categories to leverage its capabilities. These include multichain decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols and applications such as Aave, Circle USDC, Hashflow, Pike, and Magpie, as well as multichain governance solutions like Uniswap. Wormhole also supports token bridges, multichain oracle feeds, in-wallet bridging, and multichain non-fungible tokens (NFTs), among others.
The diversity of applications built on top of Wormhole is a major factor that excites Multicoin Capital. Despite its early stage, Wormhole has already facilitated the bridging of over $41 billion in assets. This achievement, coupled with its support for nearly 30 disparate chains, positions Wormhole as an extremely robust and versatile bridging solution. The platform is compatible with major Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) chains, as well as Near, Move-based chains, and Solana.
Wormhole's commitment to providing an exceptional user experience (UX) is evident in its offerings. One of its crucial use cases is asset-pegging, which is facilitated through front-ends like Portal. In addition, Wormhole Connect, a front-end widget developed by Wormhole, simplifies the acceptance of deposits and withdrawals from any asset on any chain. This feature enables derivatives decentralized exchanges (DEXs) like Drift to offer a UX comparable to centralized exchanges (CEXs) such as Binance, OKX, Bybit, and Coinbase International. Users can easily deposit any asset into Drift as collateral, regardless of the chain it originated from. This frictionless cross-chain UX sets Wormhole apart in the industry.
Recently, Wormhole introduced Native Token Transfers (NTT), a framework that allows tokens to seamlessly move across chains using a burn-and-mint mechanism instead of the traditional locking mechanism. This innovation reduces gas costs, lowers latency, and enhances security for end-users. Notably, NTT-enabled tokens seamlessly integrate with Wormhole Connect, eliminating the need for users and application developers to worry about the underlying mechanics.
Another noteworthy feature of Wormhole is its support for Circle's Cross-Chain Transfer Protocol (CCTP), enabling the movement of USDC across chains. By supporting asset-pegging, native-token transfers, and CCTP, Wormhole covers all three configurations for moving assets across chains. Its single software development kit (SDK) makes it easy for developers to integrate and support all asset configurations.
Looking ahead, Wormhole is fully committed to enhancing verification processes in bridging systems. Historically, bridging systems have relied on varying degrees of trust to facilitate multichain verification. However, Wormhole is taking a different approach. The platform recently announced its focus on zero-knowledge (ZK) verification technology, aiming to eliminate the need for trust in the verification process. This move will bring numerous benefits, including improved UX, developer experience (DevEx), and overall security.
Multicoin Capital has expressed its admiration for the Wormhole team, praising their meticulous approach in building what they believe to be the leading asset bridge and multichain development platform. The firm is confident in Wormhole's potential and is grateful for the opportunity to support the team's vision.
In conclusion, Multicoin Capital's investment in Wormhole signifies the growing importance of secure and flexible interoperability platforms in the crypto industry. With Wormhole's diverse range of applications, extensive chain support, commitment to UX, and adoption of ZK verification technology, the platform is well-positioned to drive the multichain revolution forward.
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