RWA Layer 2 Plume Network raises $10 million seed round led by Haun Ventures

Plume Network, a modular Layer 2 network focused on bringing real-world assets (RWAs) on-chain, has raised $10 million in a seed funding round led by Haun Ventures. 

Other investors in the round included Galaxy Ventures, Superscrypt, A Capital, SV Angel, Portal Ventures and Reciprocal Ventures, Plume said Thursday. Angel investors, including Anthony Ramirez of Wormhole Labs, Calvin Liu of Eigenlayer, Ezaan "Zon" Mangalji of Initia, Andrew Kang of Mechanism, Jeff Feng and Jayendra Jog of Sei Network also participated.

Founded earlier this year, Plume Network previously raised $2 million, co-founder and CEO Chris Yin told The Block. The startup then began talks with investors in April to raise more funds and ended up raising four times more than planned, closing the round earlier this month, Yin said.

He declined to comment on the structure of the round, but in February, Plume submitted a regulatory filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission saying it had raised $1.6 million through a simple agreement for future equity (SAFE) plus token warrants round. That round ended up being $2 million and is part of the $10 million seed round being announced today, Yin said. He declined to comment on the valuation and whether any investors have taken board seats, either advisory or directorial.

What is Plume Network?

Plume is a modular, Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM)-compatible Layer 2 network focused on RWAs. "To date, there has not been a permissionless blockchain equipped with full-stack RWA infrastructure to deploy any asset class compliantly," Plume claims, adding that its platform will let users do things associated with RWAs, like earning yield, borrowing/lending, trading and speculating with leverage.

Currently in private testnet, Plume says it has over 80 RWA and DeFi projects already building on its network in areas such as collectibles, alternative assets, synthetics, luxury goods, real estate, borrow/lend protocols, and perpetual decentralized exchanges.

RWA involves more than just tokenizing securities, Yin said. "For example, one of our protocols lets you take out high leverage on RWAs — so you can take out a 50x leverage long on Pokemon cards. That's not by tokenizing every card, but pulling in data," he said. "What's really exciting when you go down that line of thinking is that you can create markets around new things that don't exist yet."

To ensure compliance, especially for traditional assets, Plume incorporates "know your customer" (KYC), anti-money laundering (AML), and Office of Foreign Assets Control rules into the chain, Yin said.

Plume uses Arbitrum Orbit for its EVM Layer 2 chain and Celestia for data availability. "This current stack ensures compatibility with the vast majority of protocols in the blockchain ecosystem, RWA chain-level modifications, fast transactions, and the lowest transaction fees," Yin said.

Plume Network launch timeline

Plume has been running a private testnet for the last few months and is transitioning to the next phase. Its open incentivized testnet will launch in the next few weeks, followed by the mainnet later this year, according to Yin.

Plume currently employs about 20 people from companies like Coinbase, Binance, Robinhood Crypto, dYdX, LayerZero and JPMorgan. With the new funding, Yin plans to hire more staff across engineering, go-to-market and community functions.

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