Original source: Bitlayer

On July 23, Bitlayer, a native Bitcoin layer 2 project, officially announced the completion of a $11 million Series A financing round, led by Franklin Templeton Digital Assets and ABCDE.

The focus of this financing news is not the amount of financing, but the lead investor Franklin Templeton. Especially at a time when the popularity of assets such as inscriptions and runes has faded, and the enthusiasm for financing Bitcoin ecosystem projects has slowed down, this financing news is like a shot in the arm for the market.

As an asset management giant with $1.6 trillion in assets under management, Franklin Templeton is an important participant in the current Bitcoin spot ETF market and an important manifestation of traditional financial institutions' involvement and participation in the crypto ecosystem.

Bitlayer is a Bitcoin Layer 2 project strategically invested by Franklin Templeton, a Bitcoin spot ETF service provider. The cooperation between the two parties marks an important milestone, indicating Bitlayer's leading position in technological innovation in the entire Bitcoin ecosystem. On the other hand, Bitlayer's investment in the giant also shows the project's leading position in the entire Bitcoin Layer 2 track.

Bitlayer Completes $11 Million Series A Financing

Bitcoin Layer 2 is one of the core narratives of the Bitcoin ecosystem, and many investment and research institutions are making plans.

It is understood that in addition to Franklin Templeton Digital Assets and ABCDE, investment institutions such as Stake Capital Group, WAGMI Ventures, Skyland Ventures, Flow Traders, GSR Ventures, FalconX, Metalpha, 280 Capital, Presto Labs and Caladan, as well as well-known angel investors such as BRC20 founder DOMO and FactBlock KBW co-founder Brian Kang also participated in this round of financing.

The funds raised by Bitlayer in this round of financing will be used to strengthen Bitlayer's global expansion and attract more developers and protocols to be deployed on Bitlayer. "It is an honor to work with these first-line funds that promote the development of the Bitlayer ecosystem," said Charlie Hu, co-founder of Bitlayer Labs. "The participation of industry leaders in Bitlayer's Series A financing shows our leading position in the Bitcoin ecosystem. Our goal is to obtain Bitcoin finality, build a native Layer 2 that is equivalent to Bitcoin security, and create Bitcoin history."

Bitlayer has developed rapidly in the past few months. The new financing news disclosed this time is only 4 months away from Bitlayer's last round of financing.

In March this year, Bitlayer announced the completion of a $5 million seed round of financing, led by Framework Ventures and ABCDE, with participation from dozens of institutions including StarkWare, OKX Ventures, Alliance DAO, UTXO Management, Asymmetric Capital, Kenetic Capital, Pivot Global, Web3Port, Mindfulness Capital, C6E Capital, PAKA, Comma3 Capital and Kronos Ventures, as well as top Web3 entrepreneurs and angel investors such as the famous Bitcoin OG&KOL Dan Held, Messari CEO Ryan Selkis and co-founder Dan McArdle.

So far, Bitlayer has raised a total of $16 million. Although it is not the Bitcoin Layer 2 project with the largest total amount of financing, the smoothness and efficiency of financing are definitely far ahead of projects in the same track.

Bitlayer: Building the largest Bitcoin L2 ecosystem

As the first Bitcoin security equivalent Layer 2 based on BitVM, Bitlayer has led the Bitcoin second-layer solution based on BitVM, using layered virtual machine technology (Layered Virtual Machine) and zero-knowledge proof (zkp) and optimistic verification (op) mechanisms to support various types of calculations. In addition, Bitlayer has built a dual-channel two-way locked asset bridge through OP-DLC and BitVM bridge, thereby achieving security equal to that of Bitcoin's first layer.

From digital gold to the construction of a financial ecosystem, Bitcoin still has a long way to go. The implementation of technological innovation and the transformation of public perception are urgent issues to be addressed.

Since its establishment, Bitlayer has been committed to developer deployment, ecosystem construction and user acquisition. At present, Bitlayer has achieved the following milestones:

· In March this year, the developer incentive airdrop program Ready Player One was launched, attracting more than 500 ecological projects to sign up

· In April this year, the Bitlayer technical white paper was released, announcing Bitlayer's technological innovations

· In April this year, Mainnet-V1 was launched

· In May this year, the Dapp list competition was launched

· In May this year, seven ecological projects including Lorenzo, Bitsmiley, Avalon, Bitcow, Pell, Enzo and Bitparty jointly launched the Bitlayer First Mining Festival

· In June this year, six ecological projects including GamerBoom, Macaron, Anome, Vanilla Finance, Avalon Finance and Zearn jointly launched the Bitlayer First Mining Festival S2 event

Bitlayer is building the largest Bitcoin Layer 2 ecosystem. Currently, hundreds of projects are being built on the Bitlayer network, covering infrastructure and developer tools, wallets, DeFi, NFT, games and metaverse, as well as RWA and many other sectors. Although the ecosystem is still in a relatively early stage, it is showing a booming trend.

Bitlayer's Next Step

For a long time, the Bitcoin community has been committed to exploring scalability solutions based on security and decentralization, and the market has a huge demand for solutions that can solve the trilemma at the same time. By providing a faster and more cost-effective transaction experience, Bitlayer will accelerate the application of Bitcoin in the DeFi field and pave the way for its large-scale adoption.

After launching Mainnet-V1 on April 15 this year, the Bitlayer development team is currently focusing on developing Mainnet-V2, a Bitcoin-native rollup whose Layer 2 state transitions will be supported by a Bitcoin-friendly proof system combining ZK and fraud proofs.

In the future, with the full support of strategic investors and ecosystem partners, Bitlayer will continue to drive tremendous growth and adoption of Bitcoin and become the leading Bitcoin Layer 2 infrastructure.

About Franklin Templeton Digital Assets

Franklin Templeton Digital Assets is part of global investment management firm Franklin Resources, Inc. [NYSE:BEN], whose subsidiaries operate under the Franklin Templeton name and serve clients in more than 150 countries. Franklin Templeton Digital Assets has been active in the digital asset ecosystem since 2018, building blockchain-based technology solutions, developing a range of investment strategies and running node validators.

About ABCDE

ABCDE is a venture capital firm focused on investing in leading crypto builders. Co-founded by Huobi co-founder Du Jun and former Internet and crypto entrepreneur BMAN, both of whom have more than 10 years of experience in the crypto industry. ABCDE's co-founders have built multi-billion dollar companies in the crypto industry from scratch, including a public company (1611.HK), an exchange (Huobi), a SaaS company (ChainUP.com), a media (CoinTime.com), and a developer platform (BeWater.com).

About Bitlayer

Bitlayer is the first Bitcoin security equivalent Layer 2 based on BitVM. Bitlayer's core goal is to solve the trade-off between Bitcoin Layer 2 security and Turing completeness through cryptographic innovation and blockchain engineering implementation.

Bitlayer is committed to becoming Bitcoin's computing layer, aiming to introduce hyper-scalability to Bitcoin while inheriting its security and providing users with a high throughput, low-cost transaction experience.

This article is from a contribution and does not represent the views of BlockBeats.

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