Squid Raises $4m to Expand the Capabilities of the Cross-Chain Do-Anything Layer

News provided by

Jan 31, 2024, 10:53 ET

Squid enables a seamless user experience when taking cross-chain actions like swapping or purchasing assets and onboarding into Web3 applications

ZUG, Switzerland , Jan. 31, 2024 /PRNewswire/ -- Squid, the cross-chain do-anything router, today announces $4m in strategic funding led by Polychain Capital with participation from Nomad Capital, North Island Ventures, Maelstrom, Chorus One, The Department of XYZ, Breed, Binary Builders, and Typhon Ventures, along with follow-on investments from Distributed Global, Fabric Ventures, Node Capital, and Chapter One. Squid has established itself as the fastest, most frictionless, and most secure way to swap tokens across blockchains, empowering users of thousands of assets on over 60 chains. This raise enables the team to continue its expansion in supporting chains in the EVM and Cosmos ecosystems and beyond. Additionally, the team will build deeper integrations with more decentralized applications (dApps), allowing users to easily interact with those applications in a wide variety of ways, including depositing into DeFi positions, purchasing NFT collectibles and in-game items, and more.

"Our vision for Squid is to create the UX layer for interoperability among blockchains and the apps built on them," said Christina Rud, Co-Founder of the protocol. "Like servers on the internet, blockchains are proliferating, and Squid is unifying that landscape, allowing apps to operate across chains with ease and users to have delightful, frictionless Web3 experiences."

"We're proud to support the team building Squid as they enable compelling cross-chain experiences by making interoperability among blockchains intelligent and powerful," said Olaf Carlson-Wee, founder of Polychain Capital. "In making complex cross-chain activities frictionless, Squid is unlocking the design space for application developers, allowing them to escape the confines of siloed blockchains."

Squid has rapidly grown in its first year, facilitating over 500,000 cross-chain token swaps, LP deposits, and NFT purchases, representing over $950M in volume for over 200,000 users. The one-click flow for taking these cross-chain actions offers a dramatic improvement over clunky, frustrating experiences when interacting with blockchain bridges and multiple application interfaces. In pursuit of even further optimized UX, the team launched Squid Boost, a novel system that brings cross-chain swap times under 20 seconds without reducing security for users.

"Squid is designed as a general-purpose cross-chain router, and we're excited to build support for a wide variety of activities," said Co-Founder Fig. "Already with Squid you can swap tokens, you can purchase NFTs, and you can even combine actions, like swapping assets and depositing into DeFi protocols, in a single click. Step by step, this is how we enable better application experiences and abstract away the complexity of the underlying blockchain infrastructure."

Web3 applications are becoming increasingly capable and diverse, but the barrier to accessing them remains high, with only a dedicated subset of users willing to surmount a number of technical hurdles to use them. Squid is playing a key role in alleviating that complexity in one of the most user-challenging parts of the space–moving between blockchains. The team is dedicated to making cross-chain actions feel just as simple and be just as secure as doing things on a single blockchain. This frees developers to harness the power of specialization among different chains to deliver users the best possible experiences.

With this raise, Squid will accelerate development to enable more complex bundling of transaction sequences and more efficient routing of assets. Additionally, the team is building integrations with more interoperability networks and has its sights set on bringing Squid to more blockchain ecosystems beyond Ethereum and Cosmos.

About Squid

Squid is a secure cross-chain router on Axelar Network that enables interoperability between blockchains and applications. Squid is easily integrated via their API, SDK, and front-end tools that facilitate fast and reliable single-click transactions and token transfers. Developers can use Squid to onboard users from any ecosystem and create scalable, seamless user experiences for anyone with a crypto wallet.