Bitcoin
Arch Labs $7M to Develop Bitcoin-Native Application Platform
Last updated: May 10, 2024 02:13 EDT | 1 minute reading
Arch Labs has secured a $7 million investment to develop a Bitcoin-native application platform.
The seed funding round was led by Multicoin Capital with other participants and contributors including Portal Ventures OKX Ventures, Big Brain Holdings, CMS Holdings, Tangent, Cypher and Newman Capital.
Arch is proud to be building and innovating in the Bitcoin ecosystem, alongside some of the industry’s leading funds and strategic partners.
Announcing the close of our seed round led by @multicoincaplisten to what they have to say about us:
“The emergence of the Arch Network is a direct impact… pic.twitter.com/jT6Qy6a45y
– Arch Network (@ArchNtwrk) May 9, 2024
Bridgeless Bitcoin native network
The company planned to use this fund to promote the development of Arch decentralized finance (DeFi) applications directly on Bitcoin blockchainbypassing the need to secondary layers or bridges.
Reliance on secondary layers often complicates the user experience and compromises the security benefits inherent in operating directly on the Bitcoin network.
“Ordinals marked a fundamental change in the evolution of Bitcoin. This signaled the beginning of a new era where Bitcoin could serve as more than just a payment ledger,” said Matt Mudano, co-founder and CEO of Arch.
“This moment paved the way for Arch,” Mudano said. “We are leveraging Bitcoin’s unparalleled security and liquidity to unlock an entirely new ecosystem of applications on the world’s most secure and liquid blockchain.”
The funds were raised mainly to expand the platform’s development team. By bringing on additional skilled developers, Arch Labs aims to accelerate the creation and refinement of decentralized applications.
Arch Resources and Implementation Plan
Arch is a parallelized proof-of-stake that features a Rust-based zkVM, known as ArchVM, and a decentralized verifier network, forming a trusted execution environment within the blockchain.
“We have evaluated several Bitcoin Layer 2s and they all make the same set of tradeoffs that sacrifice security for speed,” said Vishal Kankani, chief investment officer at Multicoin Capital.
“Arch is not explicitly Layer 2 in the sense that borrowers do not need to connect assets to some untrusted chain to use it,” Kankani said.
In addition to expanding its team, Arch Labs intends to launch a public development network (devnet) followed by a mainnet launch scheduled for the second half of the year.
This progression will allow early testers and future users to explore the platform’s capabilities, improving stability and functionality before a full-scale public rollout.