Today, Uniswap announced a $165 million funding round headed by Polychain Capital. The cryptocurrency bear market may have frightened off individual investors, but it hasn’t scared off venture capitalists interested in funding DeFi initiatives.
A16z Crypto, Paradigm, SV Angel, and Variant are all participating in the Series B fundraising round with Polychain Capital.
The creator of Uniswap, Hayden Adams, wrote in a post announcing the fundraising, “I’m so happy to report that we’ve received $165 million in Series B funding.”
“When I built the Uniswap Protocol in 2018, it was an experiment to see if I could create something that fully embodied the values of Ethereum: transparent, secure, and accessible. Since then, it has grown and evolved in ways I never imagined.”
Hayden Adams
Uniswap’s funding round was estimated to raise between $100-200 million
It was reported last month that the round, which is still in progress, may raise between $100 million and $200 million, with Polychain and a Singapore-based sovereign investment fund involved. The most recent round values Uniswap at $1.6 billion.
A decentralized exchange, or DEX, is a program that enables crypto trading between users without the involvement of a middleman. An Ethereum-based DEX called Uniswap lets users trade ERC-20 tokens.
These exchanges are a popular choice for traders searching for a more private way to trade due to their peer-to-peer structure, but they have also grown in popularity as a target for hackers. A cybercriminal was successful in stealing $8 million in July from its users via a phishing scheme.
Adams cited the founding of the Uniswap Foundation as evidence of the ongoing support from the community for Uniswap, stating it best represents what a decentralized community can accomplish that a single firm alone could not.
Adams said that since its inception, the platform had expanded, changed, and supported $1.2 trillion in trading volume. For instance, the governance community has decided to establish the Uniswap Foundation, which would support the Protocol’s decentralized growth and provide grants totaling at least $60 million to community projects over the next years.
He believes that over the years, the platform has developed to be critical public infrastructure for exchanging digital value.