BitVM-Based Bitlayer, a Leading Bitcoin L2, Nets $5M in Funding, Unveils $50M 'Ready Player One' Program

On Apr 3, 2024

Singapore, Singapore, April 3rd, 2024, Chainwire

Bitlayer Labs, the first Bitcoin Layer 2 solution based on BitVM, announced a seed round of $5M led by Framework Ventures and ABCDE Capital, participation by StarkWare, OKX Ventures, Alliance DAO, UTXO Management, Asymmetric Capital and many more. The announcement comes as Bitlayer prepares the launch of its open-incentive program Ready Player One, inviting developers worldwide to augment, enhance, and build on the protocol.

Bitlayer Labs, the developer of Bitcoin Layer 2 protocol Bitlayer, announced today the close of a $5 million seed funding round at an $80 million valuation, driving a vision to become the computation layer of Bitcoin.

Investors & Ecosystem Partners

Blockchain-based venture firms Framework Ventures and ABCDE Capital led the round, with participation from StarkWare, OKX Ventures, Alliance DAO, UTXO Management, Asymmetric Capital, Kenetic Capital, Kestrel, Global Coin Research, Pivot Global, and Web3Port. Many other incredible investors added value to the seed round.

Prominent angel investors including Messari CEO Ryan Selkis, Messari co-founder Dan McArdle, Asymmetric Capital founder Dan Held, Hacken CEO Dyma, Sky Mavis CEO Trung and CTO Andy, and Kyber Network founder Loi Luu, among others, joined in capitalizing the round.

Bitlayer’s seed round was delivered soaring value-add support from ecosystem partners including Hacken, AWS Cloud, Ankr, Polyhedra, Babylon, Particle Network, Meson, Nubit, BitSmiley, TokenPocket, Xverse, Flash Protocol, Umoja.xyz, RunesTerminal, and more.

The Bitlayer Network

Bitlayer is the first Bitcoin Layer 2 network based on BitVM, offering Bitcoin-equivalent security and Turing completeness. The protocol aims to build a more scalable and interconnected Bitcoin ecosystem.

The securing of new capital pushes Bitlayer’s lead in paving the way for more Bitcoin Layer 2 use cases, a race that will propel Bitcoin to prevail over other blockchains in size, scalability, and security. The fund will also enable Bitlayer to grow its team by hiring across business development and engineering faculties to support global expansion efforts.

Investment firms are increasingly optimistic about the Bitcoin ecosystem as Bitlayer is rapidly gaining prominence, capturing the industry’s attention.

Investor Remarks

Roy Learner, partner at Framework Ventures, spoke on the augmentation of Bitlayer with BitVM: “We are excited to back Bitlayer as they launch the first Bitcoin Layer 2 network based on BitVM. Looking at the trade-off space, BitVM struck us as the most practical approach to bring scalability and expressiveness into the BTC ecosystem without sacrificing security. With over $1T of global wealth looking to productively utilize their BTC, Bitlayer opens up the design space to introduce novel DeFi use cases and applications. Led by a team of OGs, we’ve been impressed by Kevin and Charlie’s blend of deep technical background and rich crypto experience and are excited to partner with them as they deliver on their vision of making Bitcoin a more productive asset.”

Qiao Wang, co-founder of Alliance DAO, emphasized the future of Bitlayer and Bitcoin L2s in the emerging era: “I spent the vast majority of my intellectual, social, and financial capital in the Ethereum ecosystem in the last decade, but deep down I’ve always been a Bitcoiner. The possibility to enhance Bitcoin’s expressiveness and scalability via L2s such as Bitlayer is the most exciting moment in the history of Bitcoin. That is because there’s over $1T of wealth stored on Bitcoin, and the holders would want to do something productive with it. Greater expressiveness and scalability enable this. Bitlayer is one of the most experienced, passionate, and technically capable teams to tackle this problem.”

In the midst of building Bitlayer, co-founder Charlie Hu shared his thoughts on the protocol’s milestone: “This support signifies investors’ and builders’ trust in Bitlayer and the team, and demonstrates a robust backing for the Bitcoin ecosystem and the future of Bitcoin DeFi at large.”

Bitlayer ventures into the future of Bitcoin with newly supplied capital, anticipating a rush of development activity and investor interest in the Bitcoin Layer 2 space.

“Bitlayer is dedicated to bringing super scalability into the Bitcoin ecosystem, with hundreds of millions of potential users as an addressable market,” said Kevin He, co-founder of Bitlayer. “We’ve created the best, easiest-to-use scalability product in order to give users better fee rates and faster actions, all based on Bitcoin’s security foundation.”

With the approach of the Bitcoin halving event, the need for a robust Bitcoin ecosystem becomes more important than ever. Bitlayer’s exacting design and rigorous security auditing in preparation for public mainnet launch primes the protocol for a flourishing builder ecosystem. Mainnet launches on April 5th, with more milestones arriving soon on the project’s development pipeline.

Ready Player One– Ecosystem Incentive Program

To accelerate ecosystem development and incentivize projects to deploy on the Bitlayer mainnet, Bitlayer is launching a series of ecosystem incentive programs– starting with the first event, Ready Player One.

The campaign is an open incentive program designed to distribute token rewards valued at over $50M to protocols and teams that deploy to the Bitlayer mainnet and demonstrate exceptional performance. Bitlayer’s growth is accelerating, urging strong projects to join its ecosystem to grow the protocol in exponential ways.

Bitlayer commits to providing comprehensive ecosystem support for all projects, offering the following resources to builders:

Potential investment from the foundation and institutions
Initial liquidity support
Comprehensive product development resources
Mentorship and pitch opportunities from top-tier incubators
Support from the Bitcoin community and OGs
Ecosystem collaboration and co-creation

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About Bitlayer

Bitlayer is the first Bitcoin Layer 2 network based on BitVM, offering Bitcoin-equivalent security and Turing-completeness. Bitlayer is committed to becoming the computation layer for Bitcoin. It introduces ultra-scalability and inherits Bitcoin’s L1 security, providing users with high throughput and a low-cost transaction experience.