Taiko Raises US$37M from Top-tier VCs Ahead Of Mainnet Launch

QUICK TAKE:

• Taiko Labs raised a total of US$37 million across three rounds, with its most recent Series A round led by Lightspeed Faction, Hashed, Generative Ventures, and Token Bay Capital.
• Taiko is now the largest Discord community in the rollups space.
• Last month, Taiko launched a new testnet, Katla, which has seen >1.1M wallet addresses and >13M total transactions to date.
• Taiko recently announced an allocation of nearly US$30 million for its second round of the grants program, making Taiko the only Ethereum Layer 2 to commit such substantial funding to support the ecosystem during a testnet phase.

NEW YORK and LONDON and SINGAPORE, March 2, 2024 /PRNewswire/ -- Taiko, an Ethereum Layer 2 scaling solution provider, today announced the close of commitments for a US$15 million Series A funding round led by Lightspeed Faction, Hashed, Generative Ventures, and Token Bay Capital. Other notable participating investors in this latest round include Wintermute Ventures, Presto Labs, Flow Traders, Amber Group, OKX Ventures, GSR, WW Ventures, and more. The close of its most recent round brings Taiko's total capital raised to US$37 million across three rounds. The closing of its Series A round comes just ahead of Taiko's highly-anticipated mainnet launch. 

Taiko is an Ethereum-equivalent ZK-Rollup, scaling Ethereum by supporting all EVM opcodes in a Layer 2 architecture that is decentralized, permissionless, and secure. Since it was founded in 2022, Taiko has successfully executed six testnets involving over 1,100,000+ unique wallets, 30,000+ proposers, and 14,000+ provers. There are over 100 live apps in the Taiko ecosystem today, supported by a vibrant community of 850,000+ members on Discord.

Taiko has conducted six testnets, each focused on different aspects of the protocol. In each of these testnets, Taiko received substantial support from hundreds of thousands of community members. These members contributed by building dapps, operating nodes, serving as proposers and provers, and engaging with the protocol in various ways — all permissionlessly.

Taiko launched its 6th testnet, Katla, early this year. Katla is the first testnet to use Taiko's Based Contestable Rollup (BCR) design, a configurable, multi-proof rollup architecture that features a contestation mechanism and based sequencing. Katla serves as the foundation of Taiko's upcoming mainnet launch.

In the future, Taiko will develop Based Booster Rollup (BBR), a design that tackles the liquidity fragmentation issue by allowing developers to deploy on Ethereum and scale natively across all L2s.

Quote from Lead Investors:

Lead investors praised Taiko for its vibrant community, based sequencing architecture, successful testnets, and more.

"Amongst an explosion of new Rollups, Taiko stands out due to its passionate community, paired with a based sequencing architecture, which uniquely simplifies the L2 value chain, streamlining trust assumptions and removing friction for developer adoption," said Samuel Harrison, Founding Partner at Lightspeed Faction.

"Hashed is profoundly impressed by Taiko's leadership in blockchain scalability with its Ethereum-equivalent ZK-Rollup technology. The team's achievements, including vibrant community engagement and successful testnets, underscore our confidence in their vision," said Ryan Kim, Founding Partner at Hashed. "Our investment signifies our commitment to pioneering technologies that promise to transform Ethereum scaling and the broader blockchain ecosystem."

Will Wang, the Managing Partner of Generative Ventures also added: "The scaling of Ethereum is an important prerequisite for the blockchain ecosystem to become the mainstream next-generation global financial system. Our continuous and firm support for Taiko demonstrated through three rounds of investment, reflects our recognition of Taiko's philosophy and execution. Due to its positioning and capabilities in type1 and BBR, Taiko is a unique choice among the many Ethereum Layer 2 networks, and therefore, we are firmly optimistic about Taiko and will continue to build and invest into the Taiko ecosystem!"

"Taiko has been fully decentralized and permissionless from day one, staying true to crypto's original ethos," said Lucy Gazmararian, Founder of Token Bay Capital. "These core values place Taiko in a strong position to become the default scaling solution for Ethereum, and we look forward to continuing our long-standing relationship with the team, helping them to scale across Asia and the Middle East from Token Bay's hubs in Abu Dhabi and Hong Kong."

Quote from Taiko Co-Founders:

"Building the first Ethereum-equivalent based rollup is something we knew was going to be a multi-year adventure," said Daniel Wang, Taiko's Co-Founder and CEO. "Now, as we approach mainnet launch, we realize what a ride it has been. We're determined to ship our products as soon as they're ready and show the industry that what had been thought of as impossible, is indeed possible."

"Our commitment to scale Ethereum in the most native way possible is something investors and partners have been very keen to support," said Taiko's Co-Founder and COO Terence Lam. "We want to thank everyone who shares our vision and continues to support us in our journey to bring Ethereum to the world."

About Lead Investors

Lightspeed Faction, a blockchain-focused venture capital firm, recently launched its inaugural US$285 million fund. Hashed is one of the largest crypto-focused venture funds and ecosystem builders in Asia, headquartered in South Korea. Generative Ventures is a venture capital firm focused on investing in companies working on decentralized networks and machine intelligence. Token Bay Capital is renowned for its expertise in blockchain investment strategies.

Note: Certain investments remain subject to regulatory approval.

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SOURCE Taiko