Crypto investors love Terraform Labs so much that they’re committing $ 150 million to its ‘ecosystem’ – TechCrunch

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There are currently many blockchain platforms competing for the attention of investors and developers, from everyone’s grandpa Ethereum, to so-called “Ethereum Killers” like Solana, which we talked about in May.

Often times, these technologies are seen as so promising that investors are willing to fund not only blockchains, but an ecosystem of products and projects built on their blockchain networks. On Wednesday, for example, Phantom, a digital wallet that resides on Solana’s blockchain network, announced a $ 9 million Series A funding led by Andreessen Horowitz (who in June also spent a lot of money on digital tokens by Solana).

Likewise, an investor syndicate is voting today for Terraform Labs, a three-year-old platform that originally aimed to strike various so-called stablecoins for e-commerce that mimic the value of various fiat currencies and have since extended his offerings.

There is so much more to build on the platform, in fact, that backers such as Pantera Capital and Arrington XRP have just committed to investing $ 150 million in products related to the Terra ecosystem, commitments that will be deployed over several years, says the company. , and commitments which, if successful, will boost Terraform’s underlying growth in a sort of virtuous circle.

Why are they so excited about Terraform? The Singapore-based company has apparently gained traction quickly with user merchants in South Korea by shortening the settlement time from days to seconds, often without e-commerce customers knowing their online transaction (and sometimes offline) involved a blockchain.

It works so well, says investor Mike Arrington, that he started an e-commerce wallet called Chai which has become popular in Asia. He also launched the Mirror Protocol, which creates fungible, or “synthetic” assets, which track the price of real-world assets. (Arrington XRP led Mirror’s first round.)

Indeed, the market cap of Terraform’s tokens – they’re called LUNA – has fallen from $ 300 million in January to $ 2.6 billion as enthusiastic buyers buy them.

Whether these backers are getting ahead is an open question, but the company’s equity investors – which also include Galaxy Digital’s Coinbase Ventures and Mike Novogratz – are clearly betting there is more to come. .

In January, when Galaxy co-led a $ 25 million funding round at Terraform, Novogratz spoke with Bloomberg about the investment. Among other praise for the company, he said: What’s great about Terra is that they’re one of the first sandbox experiences to come out of the sandbox. We are still reviewing these projects because they are the canaries in the coal mines of what else is going to happen.

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