Chamath Palihapitiya’s Social Capital Invests in Solana-Based Saber Protocol
Saber, a cross-chain stablecoin and wrapped tokens exchange built on the Solana protocol, recently announced that it had raised $7.7 million in a just-concluded seed funding round led by Race Capital.
Saber Secures Funding From Industry Investors
Other venture capital firms that participated in the equity funding round include Jump Capital, Multicoin Capital, Chamath Palihapitiya’s Social Capital, and Solana Foundation, among others.
The $7.7 million investment round also received contributions from popular crypto experts such as OKCoin’s Jason Lau, FTX’s Tristan Yver, Curve Finance’s Julien Bouteloup, Terraform Labs’ Jeff Kuan, and Stacks’ Ryan Shea.
According to Saber Labs, the core team behind the project, the funds will be channeled toward major areas such as marketing, business, product development, and team expansion.
The Solana-based stablecoin exchange noted that the funds would come in handy in increasing its staff strength to 10 by the end of the year.
Saber to Expand to Other Chains
Saber Labs CEO Dylan Macalinao, who commented on the latest feat through a spokesperson, stated that the recent funding was imperative given the rapid growth of the Solana platform and the amount of total value locked (TVL) on the exchange in recent times, adding:
“We expect Saber’s TVL to continue to rapidly increase as more projects integrate with Saber’s deep on-chain liquidity.”
Macalinao added that Saber is planning to expand its footprint to other major blockchain networks like Polygon and Celo in order to increase its number of assets.
It is worth noting that Saber already supports cryptocurrencies on blockchain projects such as Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, and Terra. The addition of Polygon and Celo could see the number of supported cryptocurrencies on the platform increase significantly.
Saber Becomes Solana’s Third Largest DApp
Saber was launched in June 2021 as a cross-chain Solana-based platform that allows traders to swap between stablecoins and wrapped tokens, provide liquidity, as well as earn profit from transaction fees and liquidity incentives.
The stablecoins are used as a means to trade between cryptocurrencies on supported blockchains, thus helping to exchange value across diverse chains.
Macalinao noted that despite launching last month, the project has a strong competitive edge over other platforms because it supports cryptocurrencies across diverse networks. According to the CEO, this advantage has helped increase the Total Value Locked (TVL) on Saber.
Data on DefiLLama show that the platform is currently the third-largest decentralized application (dApp) on Solana, having over $125 million worth of assets in TVL.
