Botanix Labs Raises $8.5 Million to Build Bitcoin-Native DeFi Ecosystem
Bitcoin development startup Botanix Labs has secured $8.5 million in a seed series funding round from prominent investors such as Polychain Capital, Placeholder Capital, Valor Equity Partners, and ABCDE. The funding will be used to build a Bitcoin-native DeFi ecosystem called Spiderchain.
In addition to institutional investors, a group of angel investors, including well-known figures in the crypto space like Andrew Kang, Dan Held, and Dovey Wan, also participated in the funding round. This latest raise follows a previous $3 million pre-seed round, bringing Botanix Labs’ total funding to $11.5 million.
The New York-based firm, co-founded by Harvard alumni and led by Belgian polymath Willem Schroé, aims to revolutionize the Bitcoin ecosystem with the Spiderchain technology. This Layer 2 primitive will provide full Ethereum Virtual Machine equivalence, allowing applications and smart contracts to run natively on Bitcoin.
According to Schroé, the mission of Botanix Labs is to build infrastructure that supports a global financial system running on Bitcoin for the next century. The Spiderchain has the potential to scale the Bitcoin ecosystem to eight billion users and unlock trillions in capital that has been dormant for years.
The technology behind Spiderchain involves a series of decentralized multi-signature processes that resemble a spider’s web, enabling seamless interoperability between Bitcoin and Ethereum. The team has already released a testnet version of the EVM Layer 2 protocol, with plans for a mainnet launch in the near future.
Unlike other Bitcoin Layer 2 solutions that rely on centralized sidechains, Botanix Labs emphasizes that Spiderchain operates fully on Bitcoin, using the EVM as its software layer in a decentralized network of multi-signatures. The team believes that Bitcoin’s security and robustness make it the ideal platform for building a global monetary network that empowers individual sovereignty.
As the crypto industry continues to evolve, Botanix Labs is at the forefront of developing innovative solutions that leverage the full potential of Bitcoin. With the support of investors and industry veterans, the firm is poised to reshape how the world views building on Bitcoin and usher in a new era of decentralized finance.
