Botanix Labs Secures $11.5 Million Funding to Develop Bitcoin-Native DeFi Ecosystem

Botanix Labs, a Bitcoin development startup based in New York and founded at Harvard, has announced a significant funding of $11.5 million in a press release sent to Bitcoin Magazine.

This funding round, led by prominent investors including UTXO Management, Polychain Capital, Placeholder Capital, Valor Equity Partners, ABCDE, Andrew Kang, Dan Held, Dovey Wan, Eric Wall and others, will fuel the creation of the Spiderchain. Spiderchain claims to be the first Bitcoin-native Layer 2 primitive with full EVM equivalence, envisioned to support a global financial system built on Bitcoin. This funding follows a previous seed series round of $8.5 million in April.

“Our team at Botanix Labs is driven by the mission of building the infrastructure that supports aglobal financial system running on Bitcoin for the next 100 years,” Willem Schroé, inventorof the Spiderchain and Co-founder of Botanix Labs stated. “The Spiderchain can scale the Bitcoinecosystem to eight billion users and unlock trillions in capital that has sat idle for years. We’re proud to have the support of so many industry veterans who share our vision for reshaping howthe world thinks about building on Bitcoin.”

Our team is also proud to be supported by a diverse group of prestigious angel investors who share our vision for the future of Bitcoin. pic.twitter.com/xqoaPcz6Bs— Botanix Labs ???? (@BotanixLabs) May 7, 2024

Since its inception in 2022, Botanix Labs says it has been dedicated to developing technologies that fortify a decentralized, Bitcoin-native financial infrastructure. The Spiderchain project, introduced through an early-stage testnet in November 2023, has already garnered significant traction with over 200,000 active addresses and more than 10,000 experimental token launches, according to the release.

The Spiderchain's architecture is designed to seamlessly transition applications and smart contracts from Ethereum to Bitcoin, offering users the ability to interact with Bitcoin's network without relying on wrapped assets. This protocol aims to enhance scalability and also opens avenues for efficient and secure financial interactions within the Bitcoin ecosystem.

“Bitcoin has proven itself to be the most secure monetary network in history,” said Armin Sabouri, CTO and Co-Founder atBotanix Labs. “Now it’s time to put Bitcoin to work by transforming it from only being a store of value into a global monetary network that empowers the sovereignty of individuals.”

For more information on Botanix Labs and Spiderchain, interested parties can visit their website here.

Bitcoin Magazine is wholly owned by BTC Inc., which operates UTXO Management, a regulated capital allocator focused on the digital assets industry. UTXO invests in a variety of Bitcoin businesses, and maintains significant holdings in digital assets.