[Funding alert] Cross-chain infra startup Router Protocol raises $4M from clutch of Web 3.0 investors

Web 3.0 cross-chain infra project Router Protocol today announced a $4.1 million token sale fundraise from Coinbase Ventures, Woodstock Fund, QCP Capital, Alameda Research, De-Fi Capital, Polygon, Wintermute, Shima Capital, TeraSurge Capital, Maple Block, Wami Capital and Bison Fund, and more.

Some of the leading angel investors in the round included Polygon’s Sandeep Nailwal, Doordash’s Gokul Rajaram, and Aave’s Ajit Tripathi. The Singapore-headquartered project had also earlier received grants from Terraform Labs and Algorand Foundation.

Router Protocol was founded in 2020 by Ramani Ramachandran, Shubham Singh, Chandan Choudhury, and Priyeshu Garg. It has been building cross-chain infrastructure that enables the communication between current and emerging Layer 1 and Layer 2 blockchain solutions.

Router has also announced partnerships with multiple protocols, including Polygon, Avalanche, Terra, Algorand etc, and plans to launch its mainnet in the next few weeks.

Ramani Ramachandran, CEO of Router Protocol, told YourStory:

"Our vision is to build Router Protocol aggressively into a class-leading, cross-chain communications infrastructure project. Going forward, there will be several Layer 1, Layer 2, roll-up based and non-rollup based blockchains seeing adoption, so it will be important for all of them to communicate with each other through cross-chain efforts."

According to him, the investors involved have been "deeply involved, hands-on, in the design and development of Router as well as Dfyn [a multi-chain decentralised exchange], as we look to build critical, scalable cross-blockchain infrastructure that is the need of the hour”.

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Darius Sit, Managing Partner, QCP, added, “Getting blockchains to communicate effectively with each other is the holy grail for DeFi going forward, and we are happy to work with the team behind Router and Dfyn and support their unique approach to solving this problem”. 

"We anticipate future Web 3.0 activity across several multi-purpose and application-specific blockchains. Router's XCLP will be an important cross-chain infrastructure solution enabling the flow of liquidity across chains. We are delighted to back and support the Router team in their efforts in this direction”, commented Himanshu Yadav, CIO, Woodstock.

In recent years, the rapid rise in Ethereum adoption has given birth to a range of L1 and L2 competitors and collaborators such as Avalanche, Polygon, BSC etc, as well as non-EVM (Ethereum Virtual Machine) chains such as Solana, Terra, Algorand, and Cosmos.

As multiple blockchain ecosystems develop, liquidity continues to be fragmented across these diverse blockchains. Each chain has been building a thriving community of DApps consisting of platforms that facilitate trading, lending, NFT-related activities and so on. 

Router Protocol claims to be unique, with zero asset fragmentation, support for the transfer of any form of generic data, 1-N bridges instead of 1:1 bridges for enhancing scalability, and infrastructure for allowing other DApps to utilise its cross-chain functionalities.

With Router v2, the startup will deploy a dedicated application-specific blockchain that will enable transparent accounting for overall actions carried out by the protocol across chains.

The Router team has also built Dfyn, a popular DEX (decentralised exchange) on Polygon.