Lava Foundation raises $11 million in token round ahead of airdrop

Lava Foundation, a newly formed non-profit for the development of the modular blockchain network Lava, has raised $11 million in a funding round ahead of the network's mainnet launch and token airdrop.

Investors in the round included Animoca Brands, Gate.io Ventures, CoinGecko Ventures, Polygon co-founder Sandeep Nailwal, Ash Crypto, CryptoLark, and media outlets Crypto Times Japan, Le Journal Du Coin and The Rollup, among other investors, Lava Foundation said Tuesday.

This is the first time the foundation is being publicly introduced, Amir Aaronson, head of the foundation, told The Block. The funding round was realized via a simple agreement for future tokens or SAFT, Aaronson said, declining to comment on the valuation.

Lava Foundation's funding round comes shortly after MagmaDevs (formerly Lava Protocol Inc.) announced a $15 million seed round in February. Aaronson said that the seed round closed in 2023 but was announced earlier this year. Following the announcement, investors showed interest in Lava, leading to the new token funding round.

"Lava Foundation is the sole entity that sells tokens and decides the roadmap for the network until the DAO is live at mainnet," Aaronson said.

What is Lava Network?

Lava is a modular blockchain network, which can be compared to the popular project Celestia. While Celestia is focused on data availability, Lava is focused on data access through remote procedure calls (RPCs). RPC requests help decentralized applications get data from blockchains and perform important tasks like sending transactions, checking balances, getting airdrops and creating smart contracts.

Lava is currently in the testnet phase and claims to have already served over 20 billion RPC requests across blockchains. It currently rewards users with points under the Magma program. Blockchain node operators join Lava and get rewarded for providing performant RPCs. Users can earn Magma points by switching their RPC connection to Lava.

Lava mainnet and token launch 

Lava's mainnet launch remains on schedule for the first half of 2024, Aaronson said. The Lava token will follow suit around the same time.

"At mainnet, a token is needed for multiple reasons, e.g., RPC providers and validators join the network by staking LAVA," Aaronson said. "A token must be live for mainnet to be functional and more details will be shared by the Foundation when they are available."

The LAVA token has a total supply set at 1 billion, part of which will be airdropped to users. It is unclear whether Lava will convert its Magma points program to LAVA tokens. Aaronson declined to comment on it and also on how many points Lava has issued since launching the program earlier this year.

Several blockchain projects are utilizing Lava, including NEAR Protocol, Evmos and Axelar. Lava said it has also signed contracts with other chains, including Filecoin, Starknet and Cosmos Hub.

While Lava is currently focused on RPC, it plans to also support other data infrastructure, such as indexing, subgraphs, sequencing, and more, in the future.