Following a secondary raise, Axelar Network is valued at $1 billion.
This week, the Axelar Network announced the completion of a $35 million Series B funding round, raising its total market valuation to more than $1 billion and establishing it as a unicorn corporation.
Dragonfly Capital, Polychain Capital, and North Island Ventures are among the major investors in the round. The network has collaborated with a number of validators as well as leading blockchain platforms such as Ethereum, Avalanche, Polygon, and Polkadot.
Various media outlets spoke with Axelar CEO and co-founder Sergey Gorbunov to gain insight into the specific strategies for capital deployment across the business in preparation for the upcoming mainnet launch.
According to him, the “primary focus is to provide universal interoperability with minimal risk,” and “the funds will be used to continue building the core network functionalities and scaling integrations with more blockchains and applications.”
“Axelar developers are also working to make the network simple to use so that developers on any blockchain can reach the greatest liquidity and user base.” With this in mind, we’re devoting resources to improving our APIs, SDKs, and documentation.”
Over the course of 2021, 18.36 million Ethereum addresses will be registered.
New quantitative data released this week by blockchain intelligence firm IntoTheBlock revealed startling insights into the growth of Ethereum network activity, with 18.36 million new addresses created in 2021, equivalent to 1.53 million per month.
#Ethereum users growth in a nutshell
A good way to track the adoption is by following the number of addresses with a balance
– There are 70.4m addresses holding $ETH
– Just in 2021, it increased 18.36m. That means the network was growing at a pace of 1.53m addresses per month🤯 pic.twitter.com/xnhDw3wHVm— IntoTheBlock (@intotheblock) February 15, 2022
Despite new highs in primary address numbers, the proportion of active addresses in relation to total addresses decreased throughout the year, starting at 1.05 percent on Jan. 1, peaking at 1.66 percent on April 25, and then falling to 0.86 percent by Feb. 15.
Despite this, Ethereum remains the dominant force in the smart contract market, with $123.15 billion in total value locked, compared to Terra (LUNA) and the newly titled BNB Chain, which have $15.5 billion and $12.6 billion, respectively.
The Avalanche ecosystem promotes cross-chain bridge development.
Over the last 12 months, the technical performance of layer-1 network Avalanche’s native asset, AVAX, has been a major proponent for cultivating an innovative ecosystem of new products and services designed to enhance or completely replace existing infrastructure elements.
In order to put this into practice, the Umbria Network has integrated a cross-chain bridge called Narni into the network, which has the potential to reduce transaction fees by up to 90% when compared to the existing Avalanche bridge.
In addition, Umbria has circulated claims claiming that the service can lower the barrier of entry for newcomers to the retail market by utilizing single-sized liquidity pools and less complex mathematical algorithms.
Several media outlets interviewed Barney Chambers, co-founder and co-lead developer of Umbria, about the specific reasons for selecting Avalanche as the project’s home and whether the desire for economic accessibility drove the decision.
“Umbria acts as the glue between all of the layer-1 and layer-2 blockchains, allowing users to move their assets cheaply and quickly.” At Umbria, we envision a future in which users will not need to know what blockchain they are using.”
Spectacular performances
According to analytical data, DeFi’s total value decreased by 6.2 percent over the week to $116.78 billion.
Following a market-wide decline in the latter half of the week, Convex Finance (CVX) was the lone riser this week, rising 8.75 percent.
Disclaimer: These are the writer’s opinions and should not be considered investment advice. Readers should do their own research.
