Polychain Capital, an investment firm with a focus on cryptocurrencies, led a $165 million Series B fundraising round for the decentralized exchange Uniswap Labs.
New Avenues of expansion with old backers
Polychain Capital spearheaded the fundraising round, which also included other returning investors, namely Andreessen Horowitz, Paradigm, Variant, and SV Angel, among others. In light of this fresh funding, Uniswap Labs has said that its company valuation has increased to $1.66 billion.
Uniswap stated that the funds would be used to create new online apps, developer tools, and a push toward mobile, all aiming to improve the user experience and attract more customers. In the future, the firm also hopes to introduce initiatives including nonfungible tokens (NFTs).
An indication that Uniswap planned to adopt many of the distinguishing features of Web3 from the present Web2 ecosystem can be seen in the announcement’s title: “Bringing Web3 to Everyone.”
Uniswap riding the DeFi wave
Uniswap labs is an organization dedicated to developing products based on the same-named protocol. It hosts the largest decentralized crypto exchange, where users may deposit tokens into so-called liquidity pools, rewarding them for locking up their assets.
Uniswap was founded and launched in 2018 by self-taught coder Hayden Adams, who has stated that he sees the project’s success and the fundraising round as proof that the decentralized model, in which autonomous code handles most or all of the project’s functions, is sustainable.
“For us, the industry has started to prove itself and we’re seeing the value of it, especially in this bear market when a lot of centralized infrastructure failed, and a lot of decentralized entities prevailed,” said Adams.
