Metis Raises $4 Million to Scale Ethereum and Drive Web3 Adoption

Ethereum scaling startup Metis has announced the completion of a $4M private round. The latest raise means that Metis has banked $5M to date from private investors and still has a public sale of its native token to come on May 13. Blockchain VCs clamored to write checks for Metis, having been impressed by its layer 2 solution that connects to the Ethereum mainchain.

Blockchain VCs Simp for Scalable Layer 2s

Blockchain investors love Ethereum, but like the network’s users, they’re less enamored with its scalability. The blockchain’s notoriously high fees and low throughout have prompted developers to devise alternatives that can take the strain including a range of complementary Ethereum networks known as layer 2s.

These transport transactions to more scalable sidechains before broadcasting the final transaction to the Ethereum network when absolute finality is required. This is usually done periodically on a checkpointing basis, or whenever a user moves assets between layer 2 and the mainchain.

Not content with building Metis Rollup, an adapted version of Optimistic Rollups, Metis has created a set of tools for projects and companies looking to build on its layer 2. These aren’t just limited to traditional developer tooling but include tools for community and budgetary management. If this sounds awfully like a DAO, that’s because it is, but there’s a twist: Metis’ version is known as a Decentralized Autonomous Company (DAC), forming a framework for project management and community organization on layer 2.

From Private Sale to Public Sale

The next phase in Metis’ journey will naturally be a public token sale, which is set to take the form of an IDO on PAID Network’s Ignition launchpad on May 13. Community members will have the opportunity to purchase METIS tokens, which will be made available for trading on Uniswap and Gate.io shortly after.

Metis has been buoyed by a popular alpha testnet program that attracted broad participation from the Ethereum community. According to Elena Sinelnikova, Metis CEO and co-founder, there were “12,632 wallets created, 6,856 DACs (Decentralized Autonomous Companies) registered, and 166,859 on-chain transactions made in three weeks.”

“Our first-ever community-minting NFT event was also a success,” she added, “with 12,118 wallets connected to this event, and 2,560 Tribes created around the world to achieve the goal of minting the NFT artwork, “Rebuilding the Tower of Babel”. We have never been so confident that we are on the right track to provide the easy-to-use and highly scalable Layer 2 infrastructure that will promote the coming of the Web3 era.” 

Web3 technology, once seen as a niche market, is now attracting enterprises jaded by the hazards of the centralized hub-and-spoke model, in which data is dangled as a honeypot to hackers, and where censorship and surveillance are rampant. Metis is at the forefront of the movement to decentralized services where users control their data and censorship is virtually impossible thanks to the irreversibility and permissionless design of blockchain networks.