Introducing the $60M Axelar Ecosystem Startup Funding Program

Axelar, Dragonfly, DCVC and a list of top-tier investors launch a program to fund Web3 products that the centralized web cannot offer.

NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Axelar, delivering secure interchain communication across Web3, announces the $60 million Axelar Ecosystem Startup Funding Program. The program will accelerate the development of decentralized applications and protocols that can replace centralized exchanges, providing onramps to blockchain-based technology for millions of users.

A group of top-tier blockchain investors is committing capital to support the program: Blockchange, Chorus One, Collab+Currency, Cygni, dao5, DCVC, Divergence Ventures, Dragonfly Capital, Lemniscap, Morningstar Ventures, Nima Capital, Node Capital, North Island Ventures, Rockaway Blockchain Fund, SCB 10X, and others.

“Recent innovations on the decentralized Web, from digital art to novel market infrastructure, have inspired speculative fervor, but centralized services have been the beneficiaries – with disastrous results,” said Sergey Gorbunov, co-founder of Axelar. “With the Axelar Ecosystem Startup Funding Program, Axelar and its investment partners will back a new generation of Web3 startups that are poised to change that flow.”

The Axelar Ecosystem Startup Funding Program is designed to nurture a pipeline of developers building Web3 products that are better than anything on the centralized web. That means they:

• Solve global problems that the centralized internet cannot address.
• Safeguard digital sovereignty, security and privacy.
• Onboard masses easily, without unnecessary friction between specific blockchains or tokens.

The Axelar Ecosystem Startup Funding Program will establish a connection between investors who share this vision, and the flow of new developers building interchain dApps that use Axelar as infrastructure to make it a reality. Investors get early exposure to projects; for developers, the program is an opportunity to connect with active Web3 investors who share their vision and goals.

“The next wave of crypto adoption won’t come on its own. We’re actively looking to invest in teams building applications and use cases that will build that momentum,” said Dragonfly Capital managing partner Haseeb Qureshi. “These teams have clear vision and they’re looking for infrastructure like Axelar to make their vision possible. This is the nexus through which the next wave in crypto emerges.”

Investors participating in the program will engage with teams individually, making independent investment decisions on the deals the Axelar Ecosystem Startup Funding Program introduces. Powered by this visionary group of investors, the program will accelerate the growth of the decentralized web on all blockchains. To bootstrap the flow of new startups, the program intends to operate a series of hackathons, meetups and grant programs.

The Axelar Ecosystem Startup Funding Program welcomes new Web3 builders who aim for mass adoption and impact. Axelar already connects nearly more blockchains than any other interoperability protocol, and provides features, like one-time deposit addresses, that traditional bridges cannot duplicate. Development partners like Arbitrum, Circle, Osmosis and Polygon are committed to our shared vision of mass adoption on the decentralized Web.

Developers, read the documentation to find out how Axelar can help make your user experiences chain-agnostic and seamless, and get in touch with the Axelar core team.

About Axelar

Axelar delivers secure interchain communication. That means dApp users can interact with any asset, any application, on any chain, with one click. You can think of it as Stripe for Web3. Developers interact with a simple API atop a permissionless network that routes messages and ensures network security via proof-of-stake consensus.

Axelar has raised capital from top-tier investors, including Binance, Coinbase, Dragonfly Capital and Polychain Capital. Partners include major proof-of-stake blockchains, such as Avalanche, Cosmos, Ethereum, Polkadot and others. Axelar’s team includes experts in distributed systems/cryptography and MIT/Google/Consensys alumni; the co-founders, Sergey Gorbunov and Georgios Vlachos, were founding team members at Algorand.

More about Axelar: docs.axelar.dev | axelar.network | GitHub | Discord | Telegram | Twitter.