Ethereum Rival Solana Raises $314 Million in Private Token Sale

Solana Labs raised $314 million in a private token sale, making it the fourth-highest fundraising in the crypto ecosystem. The private funding round was led by Andreessen Horowitz and Polychain Capital, with participation from Alameda Research, Blockchange Ventures, and CMS Holdings.

Anatoly Yakovenko, CEO of Solana said,

“That’s the whole purpose of the space: it’s empowering everybody with cryptography so there’s no middleman anymore, it’s just a super-connected network,”

Solana blockchain is often compared against Ethereum blockchain because of its smart contract usage and matching functionalities and is quite popular for its dApp ecosystem that was popularised by Ethereum blockchain. At present Ethereum can process about 15 transactions per second while Solana can process 1,000 transactions every second. Ethereum currently works on Proof of work and will be moving to Proof of Stake in two years.

Solana works on Proof of stake mining consensus and has processed more than $19 billion in on-chain transactions. The current fundraise confirms earlier reports about the company raising about $450 million in new funding round.

The total amount of funding capital raised by Solana reached $335 million, previously it has raised $20 million in a Series A funding round in 2019. 2021 has proven to be a great year for crypto companies as they raised hundreds of millions of dollars which took their valuation into billions. BlockFi raised $350 million in Series D funding round, Blockchain.com raised over $300 million and Chainalyis raised $100 million.

Solana Aims to Utilize Funds For Infrastructure Expansion

The blockchain company aims to utilize the newly raised funds towards infrastructure expansion and build a new venture investing arm, that would act as a dedicated trading desk for the Solana ecosystem.

The Solana blockchain has over 90 projects and it is expanding rapidly. The blockchain aims to reach a 1 billion user base. It aims to prioritize scalability and low-cost transactions.

About Author

An engineering graduate, Prashant focuses on UK and Indian markets. As a crypto-journalist, his interests lie in blockchain technology adoption across emerging economies.