AltLayer closes $14.4 million strategic round co-led by Polychain and Hack VC

Rollups platform AltLayer has raised $14.4 million in a strategic funding round co-led by Polychain Capital and Hack VC.

OKX Ventures, HashKey Capital, Bankless Ventures, Primitive Ventures, SevenX, Mask Network, IOSG and TRGC also participated in the round, which closed in September 2023, according to a statement released today. 

In 2022, AltLayer had raised $7.2 million in a seed funding round. 

The fresh capital will be used to expand AltLayer’s team and further develop its rollup infrastructure, according to a statement. AltLayer didn't disclose the valuation.

The raise comes after AltLayer launched its native token last month and rewarded users had staked on Celestia and EigenLayer, holders of AltLayer’s NFTs and participants in its community campaigns. Some 300 million ALT tokens ($141 million), or 3% of the total supply, constituted the first airdrop, with 83% of the tokens claimed.

What's AltLayer?

AltLayer is a decentralized protocol that enables developers to create rollups from software stacks such as OP Stack, Arbitrum, and Polygon CDK, described as rollup-as-a-service.

The project also plans to introduce what are known as “restaked rollups” — Layer 2 projects that leverage EigenLayer’s restaking mechanism to bootstrap network security.

“AltLayer is undertaking novel research and development that inspires us to think about how much we can scale with the right tools,” stated Luke Pearson, General Partner at Polychain Capital, regarding the firm’s investment in AltLayer.

The team also aims to recreate the restaked rollups framework beyond Ethereum, leveraging Bitcoin to secure external networks in collaboration with Babylon .

ALT token holders participate in the project’s governance, and network participants will be required to pay protocol fees using the tokens. The token currently trades at $0.47 at a fully diluted valuation of $4.7 billion, according to CoinGecko data. 

AltLayer previously raised $7.2 million in a seed funding round co-led by Polychain Capital, Jump Crypto and Breyer Capital.