Cross-Chain Protocol DeBridge Gets $5.5M in Seed Funding Round Led by ParaFi Capital

Cross-chain interoperability and liquidity transfer protocol deBridge has secured $5.5 million in a seed funding round led by ParaFi Capital.

Participation in the round also came from investors including Animoca Brands, Huobi Ventures, Lemniscap, Crypto.com Capital, MGNR, IOSG, Fundamental Labs and bitScale.

The fresh injection of capital will go towards building the protocol’s infrastructure and decentralized services in a bid to enable any protocol to expand to any blockchain network, according to co-founder Alex Smirnov.

“It’s our first fundraising. We started the fundraising when we already had a minimum viable product and proof of concept,” Smirnov told CoinDesk via Telegram.

The deBridge project began in the spring of this year during a Chainlink hackathon where the project’s team took first prize, according to a press release on Tuesday.

In a bid to achieve greater scalability and interconnectivity between different protocols, a network of independent oracles is elected by the project’s governance and managed via smart contracts, the project’s team said.

Read more: CoinFund, ParaFi Lead $5.2M Seed Round for Liquidity Staking Platform ClayStack

Cross-chain composability of smart contracts, cross-chain swaps, the bridging of “any” arbitrary asset and the bridging of non-fungible tokens (NFTs) are some of the areas deBridge is attempting to enhance or fix altogether.

“As DeFi becomes a multi-chain phenomenon, decentralized bridges that can transfer value between distinct ecosystems will become increasingly important,” said Nick Chong, investment analyst at ParaFi Capital.

A mainnet launch is slated for the latter half of this year, according to Smirnov, and will support Ethereum, Binance Smart Chain, HECO, Polygon and Arbitrum. The first phase of the project’s protocol will enable other projects and users to perform cross-chain swaps and bridging and to start integrating with or building on top of deBridge.