Quick take:
- Polygon raised $450 million in a private round that involved selling its utility token $MATIC.
- The funding round was led by Sequoia India with participation from SoftBank Vision Fund 2, Galaxy Digital, Galaxy Interactive Tiger Global and Republic Capital.
- The blockchain scaling protocol said it will use the funds to accelerate the development of its Web3 version of (AWS).
Polygon an Ethereum scaling ecosystem on Monday said it raised $450 million from a private sale of its utility token $MATIC. The funding round was led by Sequoia India with participation from SoftBank Vision Fund 2, Galaxy Digital, Galaxy Interactive Tiger Global and Republic Capital.
Polygon said the team will use the funds to maintain the company’s leadership in driving mass adoption of Web3 applications. The platform believes Ethereum still has the potential to prevail as the leading network for Web3 applications despite the emergence of several blockchains based on the proof-of-stake ecosystem.
Polygon has been rapidly investing in new advanced technology dubbed zero-knowledge (ZK), which it believes will be used to onboard the next billion users to Web3. The company said it will continue to invest in ZK solutions in a bid to create the Web3 version of Amazon Web Services (AWS).
The team has committed to investing $1 billion in ZK solution, and its campaign will go an extra milestone following Monday’s successful capital raise.
Polygon said Alameda Research, Transcend Fund, Makers Fund, Animoca Brands also participated in the funding round, with Alan Howard (co-founder, Brevan Howard) and Kevin O’Leary (Mr Wonderful from ABC’s Shark Tank) also among the notable individual investors. There were also several venture capital firms from the GameFi sector.
Despite the massive injection of cash from leading VCs and private investors, Polygon said its community remains at the core of its long-term plans after attributing the successful fundraise to the ecosystem.
“Web3 builds on the early Internet’s open-source ideals, enabling users to create the value, control the network and reap the rewards. Ethereum, scaled by Polygon, will be the bedrock of this next stage in the Web’s evolution,” said Polygon co-founder Sandeep Nailwal.
In the announcement, Polygon said its team is building a complete suite of solutions similar to what AWS offers to developers. The blockchain scaling framework wants to create a solution “for every possible use case and scaling at a click of a button.”
The Polygon POS has already achieved a lot by offering high transaction throughput at low fees, a system that is secured by the Ethereum Mainnet. It believes that ZK solutions will make network congestion history whilst tackling application privacy.
Polygon has emerged as one of the preferred platforms by projects looking to build futuristic games on Web3.
The company’s NFT and blockchain games unit Polygon Studios was launched in 2020 and has since attracted some of the largest Web3 and virtual land projects in the industry, including Decentraland, The Sandbox and Decentral Games, among others.
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