Botanix Labs secures $11.5 million in funding to develop Bitcoin-based DeFi ecosystem

Botanix Labs, a New York-based, Harvard-founded Bitcoin development startup, announced that it has received significant funding of $11.5 million in a press release sent to Bitcoin Magazine.

Led by prominent investors including UTXO Management, Polychain Capital, Placeholder Capital, Valor Equity Partners, ABCDE, Andrew Kang, Dan Held, Dovey Wan, Eric Wall, and others, this funding round will fuel the birth of Spiderchain. Spiderchain claims to be the first Bitcoin-based layer 2 primitive equivalent to a full EVM, envisioned to support a global financial system built on top of Bitcoin. This round of funding follows a previous Seed Series round of $8.5 million in April.

“Our team at Botanix Labs is driven by our mission to build the infrastructure that supports a global financial system running on Bitcoin for the next 100 years,” said Willem Schroé, inventor of Spiderchain and co-founder of Botanix Labs. “Spiderchain can expand the Bitcoin ecosystem to 8 billion users and unlock trillions of dollars of capital that has been sitting idle for years. We are proud to have the support of so many industry veterans who share our vision of reshaping the way the world thinks about building Bitcoin.”

Our team is also proud to have the support of a diverse group of high-profile angel investors who share our vision for the future of Bitcoin. pic.twitter.com/xqoaPcz6Bs

— Botanix Labs 🕷 (@BotanixLabs) May 7, 2024

Botanix Labs said it has been dedicated to developing technologies that power the decentralized Bitcoin-based financial infrastructure since its founding in 2022. According to the release, the SpiderChain project, which was introduced via an early-stage testnet in November 2023, has already garnered significant interest with over 200,000 active addresses and over 10,000 experimental tokens launched.

Spiderchain’s architecture is designed to seamlessly transition applications and smart contracts from Ethereum to Bitcoin, giving users the ability to interact with the Bitcoin network without relying on wrapped assets. The protocol aims to improve scalability and paves the way for efficient and secure financial interactions within the Bitcoin ecosystem.

“Bitcoin has proven to be the most secure monetary network in history,” said Armin Sabouri, CTO and co-founder of Botanix Labs. “Now is the time to leverage Bitcoin by transforming it from a store of value into a global monetary network that empowers individual sovereignty.”

For more information about Botanix Labs and Spiderchain, interested parties are encouraged to visit their websites.

Bitcoin Magazine is wholly owned by BTC Inc. UTXO Management, a regulated capital allocator focused on the digital asset industry. UTXO invests in various Bitcoin businesses and holds significant holdings in the digital asset.