ZetaChain Raises $27M for Interoperable Layer-1 Blockchain That Connects All Chains, Including Bitcoin, Cosmos, and Ethereum

Upcoming mainnet launch will end fragmentation in the blockchain sector through support for chain-agnostic and universal smart contracts that access and manage all blockchains such as Ethereum, Polygon, BSC, and even non-smart contract blockchains such as Bitcoin and Dogecoin.

SAN FRANCISCO, Aug. 17, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- ZetaChain, the layer-one blockchain that brings universal interoperability to crypto, has closed a $27 million equity funding round from a range of top participants. The participants in the equity round include Blockchain.com, Human Capital, VY Capital, Sky9 Capital, Jane Street Capital, VistaLabs, CMT Digital, Foundation Capital, Lingfeng Capital, GSR, Kudasai, Krust, and others.

ZetaChain started in 2021 and has close to 150 contributors from all over the world. Some of the core contributors include Ankur Nandwani (ex-Coinbase, Brave, 0x, and co-founder of Basic Attention Token), Panruo Wu (early contributor to THORchain), and Brandon Truong (ex-BuzzFeed, Udacity, Yada). Other core members include former employees of Cosmos, Ignite, Consensys, and multiple other blockchain projects.

ZetaChain's mission is to establish a new standard for blockchain interoperability and enable users to manage all of their assets and data from a single platform, regardless of the blockchain they were created or stored on and without the need for bridges or wrapped tokens. This includes non-smart contract chains like the Bitcoin network and Dogecoin. Standardized interoperability provides developers with significant advantages as they can manage a single contract for all chains and reduce the attack surface. ZetaChain's Ethereum Virtual Machine compatible smart contract layer and omnichain toolkit empower developers to seamlessly implement Bitcoin smart contracts. This unlocks a whole world of users who were previously solely in Bitcoin, enabling them to utilize their Bitcoin within the broader DeFi ecosystem.

The ZetaChain ecosystem is thriving, with more than 27,000 dApp contracts currently deployed on the platform. These represent a diverse range of third-party decentralized applications, including cross-chain DeFi, NFTs, universal web3 social, identity, and gaming protocols. Already, more than 1.7 million users have participated on the ZetaChain testnet, which has seen over 13 million transactions completed to date.

"ZetaChain's purpose is to simplify managing assets and data across multiple blockchains, which remains a complicated and fragmented process that's hindering hundreds of millions of new users joining the web3 ecosystem," said Ankur Nandwani, ZetaChain core contributor. "Our EVM-compatible cross-chain smart contracts alleviate these issues by allowing decentralized app developers to build services that are faster, more secure, and easy to use."

Built on top of the Cosmos SDK and Tendermint Consensus, which provide fast block time and instant finality, ZetaChain aims to overcome the limitations of traditional cross-chain solutions like bridges that rely on centralized trust models, making them susceptible to security breaches. Instead, ZetaChain operates as a transparent Proof-of-Stake blockchain, ensuring complete transparency, verifiability, and trust-minimized functionality for all transactions and activities, including cross-chain transactions.