- Summary:
- Portal, a fast-growing self-hosted layer 2 wallets and a cross-chain DEX on Bitcoin has raised $8.5 million from a group led by Coinbase Ventures.
Portal, a fast-growing self-hosted layer 2 wallets and a cross-chain DEX on Bitcoin has raised $8.5 million from a group led by Coinbase Ventures. The platform will use the funds to build a self-sovereign and uncensorable DeFi platform based on Bitcoin.
Portal raises funds from Coinbase
Bitcoin has achieved significant success as a blockchain platform. Besides, its total market capitalization of more than $800 billion is significantly higher than that of Ethereum and other platforms.
Yet, Bitcoin has been left behind in the Decentralized Finance (DeFi) industry. Data compiled by DeFi Llama shows that there are two DeFi platforms built on Bitcoin. Their total value locked is worth just $112 million. This compares to Ethereum, which has more than 220 DeFi coins with a TVL of more than $116 billion.
Portal is about to change this as the company raised $8.5 million to build a self-sovereign and uncensorable DeFi platform on Bitcoin. The funding round also involved companies like OKEx, Republic.co Galaxy Digital, DFINITY, and Autonomy Capital, among others.
The platform offers solutions that increased the speed and liquidity of centralized platforms with the trust guarantees offered by Bitcoin. This speed is enabled by the platform’s Layer 2 and Layer 3 technology known as Fabric enables the completely private, off-chain execution of smart contracts for asset issuance, staking, and derivatives among other entities.
It also uses Bitcoin’s hash time-locked contracts to ensure that users have full control over the funds offered in trade. In a statement, the company’s founder said:
“We believe Bitcoin provides the much needed financial infrastructure that the free, uncensorable internet-of-the-future will be built on, and although we are starting with a P2P exchange, our mission is to be The Platform for decentralized, peer-to-peer human interactions… be it communications, financial transactions, or social media.”
The announcement came at a time when Bitcoin is crawling back after crashing below $40,000 as investors remained concerned about contagion risks.