Venture capital (VC) firm Paradigm has led a $225 million fundraising round for a new Solana layer-1 blockchain network, Monad Labs
To create a new layer-1 smart contract network that is more affordable and faster than Ethereum, Monad Labs closes the investment round.
According to Keone Hon, the creator of Monad Labs, who spoke with Fortune in an interview, the fundraising round was revealed following two years of development:
“We’re emerging from roughly two years of development […] At a time when a lot of the research community was focused on roll-up, data availability, and other directions of scaling, Monad basically went really deep on the pure execution side.”
According to a March 14 X post by Monad, the new L1 will be 100% interoperable with the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM), which can process up to 10,000 transactions per second (TPS).
Ethereum is the birthplace of decentralized finance (DeFi), yet it has many drawbacks, such as infamously high gas prices during network congestion. With its execution-focused L1, Monad Labs hopes to address its weaknesses. Hon stated to Fortune:
“We realized there was a huge need for a more performant EVM, and that in spite of this need, no one was really working on this problem.”
Rise in Crypto VC Funding
A time when VC interest in cryptocurrency companies was on the rise it coincided with the announcement of the fresh investment round.
Layer-2 network for Bitcoin On April 9, Mezo declared the conclusion of a $21 million Series A fundraising round headed by Pantera Capital. With Mezo, investors can get yield according to how long they retain their tokens. As a “Bitcoin Economic Layer,” they refer to it.
According to reports surfaced on April 3, Paradigm is in talks to raise $850 million for a new fund. If successful, this would be the greatest fundraising effort in the cryptocurrency space since May 2022, when a record-breaking $4.5 billion was raised by Silicon Valley-based venture capital company Andreessen Horowitz.
According to data research platform Crypto Koryo, the first quarter of 2024 saw a 38% increase in funds spent in the cryptocurrency venture capital space, ending a two-year decline.
