Side Protocol raises $1.5 million in pre-seed funding to grow cross-blockchain liquidity network

Quick Take

  • Side Labs, the firm building out the cross-blockchain liquidity network Side Protocol, secured $1.5 million in funding via a SAFT round.
  • Side Labs intends to use the funds to build out its team, ensure legal compliance and grow the Mesh Liquidity Network.

Side Labs, the startup behind the interconnected liquidity provider Side Protocol, raised $1.5 million in pre-seed funding.

The funding was done through a simple agreement for future tokens sale, in which the token's valuation totaled $30 million, the firm's co-founder Shane Qiu told The Block. Participants include Hashkey Capital, KR1, Continue Capital, Symbolic Capital, Informal Systems, Dora Ventures, Charles Lu, Harry Halpin, Eric Chen, Mirza Uddin, Siddhartha Dutta and Vincent Niu. 

Side Labs intends to use the fundraise to expand its team and guarantee adherence to legal and compliance standards while building out the Mesh Liquidity Network, which aims to eliminate bridges and intermediary tokens for cross-blockchain asset exchange through a network of liquidity hubs. 

Mesh liquidity

Within the next month, Qiu said that Side Labs intends to launch a private testnet with a select group of members of the firm's backers and community members, in addition to building out a public testnet that explores user rewards, mesh liquidity, staking and governance and other features. Within six month, the firm aims to launch the first version of its mainnet followed by a V2 testnet introducing zero-knowledge technology. Finally, Side Labs intends to launch its V2 mainnet with ZK technology to give L1 and L2 protocols mesh liquidity within the next year.

"Mesh liquidity represents a natural progression in the evolution of inter-chain asset exchange," Qiu said.

Qiu previously worked as a researcher at Binance Labs, the venture capital arm of the crypto exchange giant Binance. 


© 2024 The Block. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.

About Author

MK Manoylov has been a reporter for The Block since 2020 — joining just before bitcoin surpassed $20,000 for the first time. Since then, MK has written nearly 1,000 articles for the publication, covering any and all crypto news but with a penchant toward NFT, metaverse, web3 gaming, funding, crime, hack and crypto ecosystem stories. MK holds a graduate degree from New York University's Science, Health and Environmental Reporting Program (SHERP) and has also covered health topics for WebMD and Insider. You can follow MK on X @MManoylov and on LinkedIn.

Editor

To contact the editor of this story:
Nathan Crooks at
[email protected]