Axelar, a decentralized protocol designed by the founding members of the Algorand blockchain to allow cross-blockchain communication, has raised $3.75 million in seed funding.
Announced Thursday, the funding round included participation from investors including Binance X, the investment arm and accelerator of cryptocurrency exchange Binance, as well as San Francisco-based venture capital firm DCVC (Data Collective).
Other participants included crypto investment firm Lemniscap, crypto operator fund Divergence Ventures, serial entrepreneur Waikit Lau and AngelList founder Naval Ravikant.
"This [seed funding] will be crucial to help us accelerate our roadmap and to scale cross-chain communication," said Sergey Gorbunov, co-founder and CEO at Axelar. "Today, we are seeing more and more autonomous blockchain platforms emerge, with no unified approach for developers to communicate with the entire ecosystem."
The protocol attempts to rectify this by acting as a communications bridge, connecting blockchain ecosystems that, in effect, speak different languages. In turn, this will save developers the hassle of rewriting their decentralized apps, or dapps, for each network by using Axelar's universal protocol and API, according to the company.
The seed funding will go toward further developing the network's technology, tools and API solutions, along with recruiting the engineers that will assist in the design of the underlying protocols, per the announcement.