A $150 million investment headed by FTX Ventures and Jump Crypto was launched this morning by the blockchain firm Aptos, created by former Meta workers.
According to a news release, new investors in the startup’s most recent fundraising include Griffin Gaming Partners, Franklin Templeton, Circle Ventures, and Superscrypt. In March, FTX Ventures participated in a funding round that saw Aptos raise $200 million from money managers like a16z, Tiger Global, and Multicoin Capital.
Blockchain technology must prioritize scalability, safety, and usability to achieve “the next billion users,” according to FTX Ventures venture partner Ramnik Arora.
Former Meta employees founded the blockchain with the intention of making it more accessible to “billions” of people. Aptos now runs on a number of testnets; the mainnet has not yet gone live, however it is expected to happen later this year.
The $350 million that Aptos has already raised this year will be used to advance the company’s scalable and secure Layer 1 blockchain. In contrast, Ethereum, the most popular blockchain for smart contracts, raised more or less $18.4 million in 2014. Aptos Labs is now valued at over $2 billion after the latest raise.
The most recent fundraising round, according to CEO and co-founder Mo Shaikh, is a validation of the business’s efforts to date and demonstrates demand for a next generation Layer 1. “We’ve known for a while that, due to issues like outages and downtime, current blockchains are not fit for purpose when it comes to mass web3 adoption,” he continued.