Injective Protocol raises $10 million from Mark Cuban and other investors
Decentralized derivatives exchange Injective Protocol has raised $10 million in a new funding round.
Several investors, including billionaire entrepreneur Mark Cuban, Pantera Capital, BlockTower, Hashed Ventures, CMS Holdings, and QCP Capital, participated in the round.
"This was a private placement token sale," Mirza Uddin of Injective Protocol told The Block. "We sold tokens with a lockup period at a $1 billion+ valuation."
The lockup period is one year, said Uddin.
Injective Protocol's native token INJ is already live and trading, but new tokens were issued to the investors from the protocol's treasury, Uddin told The Block. "It's difficult to buy in the market because the size is quite large," he said.
With fresh capital at hand, Injective looks to enhance its platform and double its current team of 22 by next year, Uddin told The Block.
"In addition, we are setting up an internal proprietary trading desk to help provide liquidity to our exchange," he said. "In that effort, we have recruited a head trader from Tower Research and are quickly ramping up that internal desk."
Injective Protocol was launched last December and is built on Tendermint, a Layer-2 scaling solution. The protocol allows users to trade crypto, stocks, forex, crypto, non-fungible tokens, as well as synthetic assets.
The private token round brings Injective Protocol's total funding to date to over $17 million. The protocol has previously raised $7.1 million, according to Crunchbase.