LI.FI raises $17.5 million Series A to help traditional finance build on DeFi

Fundraise comes as financial firms continue to expand usage of Web3 and decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols

LI.FI, the leading multi-chain liquidity and data gateway, announced today that it has raised more than $17 million in a Series A fundraise co-led by CoinFund and Superscrypt.

The round, which totalled $17.5 million, also includes participation from Bloccelerate, L1 Digital, Circle, Factor, Perridon, Theta Capital, Three Point Capital, Abra, and nearly 20 angel investors.

"This fundraise is vital to enabling us to execute our vision of a multi-chain future," said Philipp Zentner, CEO at LI.FI. " Our goal is to enable access to any token and order flow across any chain, trading on any venue, in a seamless manner that helps bring the next one billion users to Web3."

LI.FI abstracts away the most crucial financial infrastructure to move in and out of any position on any chain — the one gateway to access all decentralized finance (DeFi), which helps traditional finance (TradFi) save valuable go-to-market time, research, integration, and maintenance overhead, to avoid sunk costs in this fast-changing infrastructure environment for developers working on projects including but not limited to dApps, Web3 & other protocols.

This raise comes after recent research from Bernstein revealed that many market experts believe finance is headed toward a "bank-free, decentralized future" that will see decentralized finance (DeFi) become "a trillion-dollar asset pool with over $40 billion in revenue by 2028." The report went on to say that a "far more sustainable, scalable, transparent [business] with improving token economics," will see a revival of the industry.LI.FI is in prime position to lead this charge.

"We are thrilled to partner with Philipp, Max and the LI.FI team for the journey ahead, and to join the company board," said Einar Braathen, Investor, CoinFund. "Philipp and Max are a special breed of founders with incredible vision and execution capabilities; they've effectively created a new category in bridge and liquidity aggregation and produced phenomenal early growth, despite the bear market."

The proceeds from this fundraise will be used to accelerate development of LI.FI's offering across more blockchains, decentralized exchanges (DEXs), cross-chain bridges, and more; and also to bolster sales, business development, marketing, and other capabilities; as well helping to better bridge the gap between traditional finance (TradFi) and DeFi in meaningful ways that help on-board these institutions to the financial markets of the future.

LI.FI has quickly become a leader in cross-chain liquidity aggregation, quickly rising to handle more than 96% of all cross-chain swap activity on MetaMask, according to data supplied by Dune, in just six months. Additionally, LI.FI recently launched Jumper.Exchange, a cutting edge multi-chain exchange interface that enables qualified users to swap virtually any asset for any other asset, with just one click.

"As we welcome an increasing number of builders and users to Web3, infrastructure to abstract away cross-chain transactions and liquidity aggregation is critical for adoption," said Braathen. "LiFi has a unique position as not only the go-to place for consumers for cross-chain transactions, but also the first stop for developers and traditional financial institutions. Powering cross-chain transactions for the largest organizations in the industry, such as Metamask and Circle, is a testament to the quality of the team and the product."

LI.FI also will introduce later this year at the IEEE's International Conference on Blockchain and Cryptocurrency Cross-chain Workshop in Dubai a proposed cross-chain framework meant to provide a high-level systematic overview of the security risks in cross-chain protocols by identifying, classifying, and analyzing the risk elements inherent in the design, implementation, and operation of such infrastructure. This framework was created in collaboration with ConsenSys, with a goal of providing a general toolkit for reasoning about cross-chain protocols.

About LI.FI

LI.FI is a multi-chain liquidity and data gateway that provides access to nearly 20 blockchains, enabling the moving of assets and sharing of data by aggregating infrastructure solutions including cross-chain bridges, relevant data sources, and decentralized exchanges, which allows for seamless interoperability for platforms and users. Based in Berlin, LI.FI was founded by a team of DeFi experts and has quickly grown to become the leading liquidity aggregator in the blockchain space.

To learn more about LI.FI, visit https://li.fi

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marko@li.finance