Ellipsis Labs raised $20 million in latest funding round backed by Paradigm

Ellipsis Labs, a firm that specializes in developing crypto exchanges, has successfully completed a $20 million Series A funding round led by venture firm Paradigm.

According to the official announcement, other backers in the funding round included venture firm Electrical Capital. Other major names included Sreeram Kannan from EigenLayer, Anatoly Yakovenko from Solana Labs, Uri Klarman from bloXroute, Justin Drake and Mike Neuder of the Ethereum Foundation, and other industry insiders.

Back in Aug. 2023, the firm had raised an additional $3.3 million from Electric capital.

Ellipsis Labs, the firm behind the Solana-based decentralized exchange (DEX) Phoenix, will inject the funds into advancing its decentralized finance (DeFi) technology stack. 

According to the firm, Phoenix is a “top 5 spot dex” across all blockchains in terms of daily volume. The platform holds a total value locked (TVL) of $14.31 million at press time. The trading volume over the past 24 hours was market at $238.79 million.

Per Ellipsis, Phoenix settles trades by eliminating the need for a “crank.” Cranks allow for asynchronous trade settlements, letting blockchains execute multiple transactions simultaneously without having to wait for the transaction finality of a preceding transaction.

“The next step for DeFi must bring the advantages of a decentralized system — accessibility, transparency and auditability — to the liquidity and efficiency that only exists in traditional finance today. Phoenix is only the first step on the long-term path to a better financial system,” the exchange developer said in a statement.

The firm is also expanding its team and has posted job vacancies for engineers to join its New York team. 

Meanwhile, venture capital Paradigm isn’t limiting its involvement to Ellipsis Labs. The firm is reportedly looking to raise between $750 and $850 million for a new fund, as reported earlier by Crypto.news.

As the cryptocurrency market saw an impressive start in the first quarter of 2024, VC firms have been getting involved. In the broader market, venture capital firm Multicoin Capital disclosed on April 4 that it led a $225 million funding round in the cross-chain messaging protocol Wormhole last year.