Binance VC arm leads $60M round in cross-chain protocol Multichain

Binance Labs, the venture capital and incubation arm of Binance cryptocurrency exchange, has led a financing round for the cross-chain protocol Multichain, previously known as Anyswap.

Shortly after rebranding from Anyswap last week, Multichain has raised $60 million in a seed funding round led by Binance Labs, the firm officially announced on Dec. 21.

Other participants in the raise included major VC firms and industry investors like Sequoia China, IDG Capital, Three Arrows Capital, Primitive Ventures, DeFiance Capital, Circle Ventures, Hypersphere Ventures, HashKey and Magic Ventures.

Apart from providing capital investment for Multichain, Binance is also building a stronger relationship with the cross-chain protocol. On Dec. 20, Multichain announced that it is now officially recommended as a tool to bridge bToken across chains through Binance’s smart contract platform, the Binance Smart Chain (BSC).

BSC said that Multichain is “one of the biggest routers on BSC,” providing “non-custodial plus multi-party computation model to guarantee the security of on-chain assets.”

Thanks Binance Smart Chain @BinanceChain for promoting #Multichain as officially recommended bridge#Multichain's top priority is to guarantee the security of on-chain assets https://t.co/CEocRygXzq

Founded in July 2020, Anyswap was originally positioned as a cross-chain decentralized exchange. The platform gradually evolved into Multichain, a cross-chain router protocol (CRP) providing a mature real-time CRP system, enabling interoperability on multiple networks including Ethereum, Binance Smart Chain, Avalanche, Moonriver and others.

According to the announcement, the total value locked on Multichain now amounts to more than $5 billion, with the number of users exceeding 300,000. Multichain co-founder Zhaojun said that the protocol connects “more public blockchains and crypto assets than anyone else, with lower transaction fees, shorter bridging time and higher security levels.”

The funds raised in the seed round will be used in the growth of the team and ecosystem, including the research and development teams focused on crypto algorithms, audits and security, the firm said.

Related: Binance to launch $1B fund to develop BSC ecosystem

Officially launched in September 2020, BSC is a decentralized finance solution to bring programmability and interoperability to the Binance Chain, relying on a system of 21 validators with Proof of Staked Authority consensus. BSC has been growing increasingly popular this year, with the network hitting a historical high of over 16 million daily transactions on Nov. 25.