The Block: Zaki Manian's DeFi project Sommelier raises $23 million in new funding

Sommelier Finance, a crypto project that helps automate DeFi trading, has raised $23 million in a Series A funding round.

The round was led by Polychain Capital, with participation from existing investor Alameda Ventures and new investors Zola Ventures, Byzantine Ventures, Tendermint Ventures, Secure Ventures, D1 Ventures, and Ferngrove Ventures.

Sommelier was founded in 2020 by Zaki Manian, former lead developer of the Cosmos protocol and Tendermint. Sommelier is a blockchain protocol that helps automate liquidity providers' (LPs') capital allocation to maximize yields.

With fresh funds at hand, Sommelier plans to upgrade its protocol and launch "Cellars" to help manage liquidity across DeFi protocols. Sommelier Cellars are community-elected strategies that the Sommelier network of validators execute to manage the movement of capital across blockchains.

Sommelier currently supports Uniswap v3 liquidity pools. The project says it has helped liquidity providers place over $10 million in liquidity on Uniswap V3, which generated over $2 million in fees for portfolio owners in the first six months since the launch of its tool.

Sommelier says it plans to support more liquidity pools across Ethereum-compatible blockchains and Layer 2 networks.

The Series A funding round brings Sommelier's total funding to date to at least $26.5 million. In March, the project raised $3.5 million in seed funding.