Axelar announces support from leading blockchain and crypto industry players in accelerating the development of its network for complete blockchain interoperability

Toronto — 12th November 2020 — Axelar, the decentralized interoperability fabric that connects blockchain ecosystems, applications and users, has announced seed funding of $3.75 million with investments secured from, Binance X, the Binance Smart Chain Accelerator Fund, an arm of Binance - the world's leading cryptocurrency exchange; and DCVC (Data Collective), the San Francisco-based venture capital firm, which last year set up a $725m deep tech fund.

Other notable investors include Lemniscap, Collab+Currency, North Island Ventures, Divergence Ventures, Cygni Labs, Waikit Lau, and Naval Ravikant. The funding will be used towards building the tech, tools, and API solutions of the network, along with recruiting the engineers that will help design the underlying technology and protocols.

Sergey Gorbunov, Co-founder & CEO of Axelar, said, “We are delighted to receive backing from such a high calibre group of investors. This support will be crucial to help us accelerate our roadmap and to scale cross-chain communication. Today, we are seeing more and more autonomous blockchain platforms emerge, with no unified approach for developers to communicate with the entire ecosystem. By launching Axelar, we’re allowing developers to build on the best platforms for their needs and leverage a simple protocol suite and API to access global cross-chain liquidity, users, and communication.”

Axelar protocol, developed by the founding team members of Algorand, and their team, is powered by a decentralized network and designed explicitly to frictionlessly connect all blockchain ecosystems that speak different languages. Axelar fabric connects stand alone blockchains, such as the Bitcoin Network and Ethereum, and cross-chain hubs, such as Cosmos or Polkadot, to enable developers to operate using a universal protocol and API. This will save dApp developers from rewriting their applications as new bridges are developed. Axelar is powered by a decentralized open network of validators that collectively run a byzantine consensus protocol, meaning that the system will continue to run even where some of the nodes may act maliciously or fail.

Commenting on the investment, Teck Chia, Head of Binance X, said, “We are impressed by Sergey and Georgios from the Axelar team for their strong background in cryptography and consensus. Interoperability is an important challenge for today’s blockchain ecosystem. We appreciate Axelar’s decentralized, secure, and uniform approaches to complete cross-chain communication. We look forward to supporting Axelar in enabling interoperability with the Binance Smart Chain.”

Calvin Liu, Partner at Divergence Ventures, said, "We believe a decentralized, generalized interoperability layer is inevitable in a multi-chain future. Axelar's approach to solving cross-chain communication is a major advancement that will enable developers to write applications and use assets between multiple chains at once. The team is incredibly strong, experienced, and focused on innovation. We're very proud to support them."

About Axelar

Axelar is building a decentralized network and tools that connect users, assets, and dApp across multiple blockchain ecosystems. The network empowers developers to build on the best platform for their needs while leveraging the Axelar stack to unlock cross-chain composability and liquidity. Axelar Network consists of a protocol suite, tools, and APIs, designed to break down the barriers to cross-chain communication. Powered by a decentralized open network of validators, anyone can join the network, use it and build on it. The Axelar Network provides a uniform solution to cross-chain communication, allowing dApps to integrate with the full blockchain ecosystem. Developed by the founding team members of Algorand and their team, Axelar’s co-founders are award-winning graduates of MIT, where they received notable recognition as part of their graduate studies.