Polymer Labs Raises $23 Million in Series A Funding

TL;DR

• Polymer Labs has raised $23 million in Series A funding round.

• The team is building an Ethereum Layer 2 network to provide interoperability-as-a-service.

Polymer Labs Raises $23 Million

Ethereum Layer-2 project Polymer Labs, has raised $23 million in a Series A funding round. The project is building a network to provide interoperability-as-a-service to Ethereum and its rollups.

According to its statement, the funding round was led by Blockchain Capital, Maven 11 and Distributed Global, with participation from Coinbase Ventures, Placeholder, Digital Currency Group, North Island Ventures and Figment Capital. 

The team didn’t disclose when the funding round began and closed, with co-founder Peter Kim declining to comment on this. He also declined to provide more details on the funding round, whether it was an equity, token, or equity-plus-token-warrants round. It also remains unclear how much Polymer Labs is currently valued at following this latest funding round. 

This funding round comes roughly two years after Polymer Labs raised $3.6 million in seed funding. Its Ethereum interoperability infrastructure is still in development and the team intends to launch the testnet in two months. Kim stated that,

"While many bridges have prioritized go-to-market and business development, we emphasize the importance of building the right solution for the long term. Most of our engineering team members were brought on outside of crypto — more senior developers with experience specifically around scaling the infrastructure for the internet in web2."

Polymer Lab’s Ethereum interoperability hub is set to connect Ethereum and its rollups before capturing other blockchains. The team is focused on establishing the next generation of the internet.

According to Polymer Labs, the current L2 networks and interoperability token bridges are prone to hacks despite their widespread adoption. However, Polymer Labs wants its L2 rollup to enable protocols on different chains to communicate efficiently and securely without introducing new trust assumptions, enhancing the functionality of a wide range of blockchains.

According to Kim, Polymer Labs will use the funds to expand the current team of about 30 members by hiring across functions, including business development and engineering. The team also intends to launch its mainnet before the end of the year, depending on the testnet performance.