Bitlayer, powered by BitVM, the leading Bitcoin L2, raises $5 million in funding and announces $50 million ‘Ready Player One’ program

adminApril 3, 2024

Singapore, Singapore, April 3, 2024, Chainwire

Bitlayer Labs, the first Bitcoin Layer 2 solution based on BitVM, raises a $5 million seed round led by Framework Ventures and ABCDE Capital, with participation from StarkWare, OKX Ventures, Alliance DAO, UTXO Management, Asymmetric Capital, and others. Announced. This announcement comes as Bitlayer prepares for the launch of its public incentive program, Ready Player One, inviting developers around the world to strengthen, improve, and build on the protocol.

Bitlayer Labs, the developer of Bitcoin Layer 2 protocol Bitlayer, announced today that it has closed a $5 million seed funding round at a valuation of $80 million, advancing its vision to become Bitcoin’s computational layer.

Investors and Ecosystem Partners

Blockchain-based venture firms Framework Ventures and ABCDE Capital led the round, with participation from StarkWare, OKX Ventures, Alliance DAO, UTXO Management, Asymmetric Capital, Kenetic Capital, Kestrel, Global Coin Research, Pivot Global, and Web3Port. Many other amazing investors added value to the seed round.

Prominent angel investors participated in this round of funding, including Messari CEO Ryan Selkis, Messari co-founder Dan McArdle, Asymmetric Capital founder Dan Held, Hacken CEO Dyma, Sky Mavis CEO Trung and CTO Andy, and Kyber Network founder Loi Luu.

Bitlayer’s seed round received surging 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 .

Bitlayer Network

Bitlayer is the first Bitcoin Layer 2 network based on BitVM, providing Bitcoin-equivalent security and Turing completeness. The protocol aims to build a more scalable and interconnected Bitcoin ecosystem.

Securing new capital pushes Bitlayer’s lead in paving the way for more Bitcoin Layer 2 use cases, a race that will push Bitcoin to gain an edge over other blockchains in terms of size, scalability and security. no see. The funding will also allow Bitlayer to grow its team by hiring business development and engineering faculty to support its global expansion efforts.

As Bitlayer quickly rises to prominence and attracts industry attention, investment firms are increasingly optimistic about the Bitcoin ecosystem.

investor opinion

Roy Learner, Partner at Framework Ventures, commented on Bitlayer’s enhancements with BitVM: “We are excited to support Bitlayer as it launches the first Bitcoin Layer 2 network based on BitVM. Looking at the trade-off space, we felt that BitVM was the most practical approach to provide scalability and expressiveness to the BTC ecosystem without sacrificing security. Bitlayer, which seeks to leverage BTC productively with over $1 trillion in global wealth, opens the design space to introduce new DeFi use cases and applications. Led by the OG team, we are impressed by Kevin and Charlie’s combination of deep technical background and rich cryptocurrency experience, and are excited to work with them to realize our vision of making Bitcoin a more productive asset. do.”

Qiao Wang, co-founder of Alliance DAO, highlighted the future of Bitlayer and Bitcoin L2 in the emerging era: I have always been a Bitcoin miner. The possibility of improving Bitcoin’s expressiveness and scalability through L2s like Bitlayer is the most exciting moment in Bitcoin history. This is because there is over $1 trillion worth of wealth stored in Bitcoin, and holders want to do something productive with it. Improved expressiveness and extensibility make this possible. Bitlayer has one of the most experienced, passionate and technically capable teams to solve this problem.”

While building Bitlayer, co-founder Charlie Hu shared his thoughts on the protocol’s milestones. “This support signals the trust of investors and builders in Bitlayer and the team and demonstrates strong support for the Bitcoin ecosystem and the future of Bitcoin. Across DeFi.”

Bitlayer is taking on the future of Bitcoin with newly supplied capital, anticipating a surge in development activity and investor interest in the Bitcoin Layer 2 space.

“Bitlayer is committed to delivering exceptional scalability to the Bitcoin ecosystem as a marketplace for hundreds of millions of potential users,” said Kevin He, co-founder of Bitlayer. “We’ve built the best, easiest-to-use scalable product on Bitcoin’s secure foundation to provide users with better commission rates and faster actions.”

As the Bitcoin halving event approaches, the need for a strong Bitcoin ecosystem has never been more important. In preparation for public mainnet launch, Bitlayer’s rigorous design and stringent security audits prepare the protocol for a thriving builder ecosystem. Mainnet launches on April 5th and more milestones in the project’s development pipeline will arrive soon.

Ready Player One – Ecosystem Incentive Program

To accelerate ecosystem development and encourage 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 a public incentive program designed to distribute token rewards worth over $50 million to protocols and teams that deploy on the Bitlayer mainnet and perform well. Bitlayer’s growth is accelerating, calling for powerful projects to join the ecosystem to grow the protocol exponentially.

Bitlayer is committed to providing comprehensive ecosystem support for all projects and providing builders with the following resources:

Potential investments from foundations and institutions
Initial liquidity support
Comprehensive product development resources
Mentoring and promotional opportunities from top-tier incubators
Support from Bitcoin Community and OG
Ecosystem cooperation and co-creation

Users can find the full article here for more information.

Introduction to Bitlayer

Bitlayer 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 excellent scalability and inherits Bitcoin’s L1 security, providing users with a high throughput and low-cost transaction experience.

Additional information about Bitlayer:

website | Twitter | discord | middle | Github