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