Multichain which was formerly named Anyswap, a cross-chain protocol raised a $60 million financing round worth $1.2 billion led by Binance Labs today. According to the press release, the series of rounds was joined by several other well-known investors such as Sequoia China, IDG Capital, Three Arrows Capital, DeFiance Capital, Circle Ventures, Tron Foundation, Hypersphere Ventures, Primitive Ventures, Magic Ventures, and HashKey. Apart from providing support financially, the group will also be jointly involved in the project’s development at a deeper level towards the common vision for web3 adoption.
Multichain who recently rebranded from Anyswap, was initially functioning as a cross-chain decentralized exchange or DEX since its inception back in July 2020. Then in 2021, the platform removed the DEX function in order to focus on its cross-chain bridge services. Finally, on December 16, Anyswap decided to rename the brand to Multichain.
As per the press release, Multichain provides cross-chain infrastructure for 25 mainstream public blockchains including Ethereum [ETH], Fantom [FTM], Binance Smart Chain [BSC], Avalanche [AVAX], Moonriver [MOVR], Arbitrum, Polygon [MATIC], and Harmony [ONE]. Besides the Total Value Locked [TVL] on the cross-chain protocol is over 300k, nearly $5 billion, with over 1,000 crypto assets circulating among different mainnets. Speaking on the latest announcement Zhaojun, the Co-founder of Multichain.
“Multichain now is the cross-chain infrastructure that connects more public blockchains and crypto-assets than anyone else, with lower transaction fees, shorter bridging time, and higher security levels. Aligning with our plan to improve Web3, the protocol will integrate NFT Cross-Chain Bridge and our new anyCall solution for arbitrary cross-chain contract calls, supporting innovative NFT and DeFi DApps in cross-chain ecosystems. We will remain on the frontline of cross-chain research.”
Multichain quest to be the ultimate Web 3 router
Multichain as per the blog post would utilize the funds to invest in the growth of the team and the ecosystem to further the mission of routing the Web3 technology. This also meant expanding the R&D team, especially the research team on crypto algorithms, the audit team that focuses on security, and the service team that supports more users and more blockchain ecosystems to connect with the cross-chain platform.
