Bitcoin development initiative Botanix Labs successfully raised $8.5 million in a seed funding round to create a Bitcoin-specific DeFi ecosystem. The funding round included angel investors such as Andrew Kang, Fiskantes, Dan Held, and Domo, the creator of BRC.
Botanix Labs Completes Investment Process
Following an unannounced $3 million pre-seed round completed in June 2023, Botanix Labs has now successfully raised a total of $11.5 million in funding. The pre-seed process was structured as a simple agreement for future equity (SAFE). The previous round included participation from Edessa Capital, Curiosity Capital, UTXO Management, XBTO Ventures, Blocmates, Eric Wall, and many other capital firms.
The New York-based firm stated that the funds will be used to create Spiderchain, a Layer-2 network specific to Bitcoin, fully equivalent to the Ethereum Virtual Machine. More specifically, Botanix Labs will use the capital to focus on product development and expand its existing team. Botanix Labs was co-founded by Harvard graduates and is managed by Belgian sage and Spiderchain network founder Willem Schroe. Schroe stated:
“Our team at Botanix Labs is driven by the mission to build infrastructure that supports a global financial system working on Bitcoin for the next 100 years.”
Key Details About Spiderchain
The team mentioned that the name Spiderchain was derived from a process of securing funds from the Bitcoin base layer using a web-like array of random and decentralized multi-signatures. The scaling technology allows applications and smart contracts operating in the Ethereum ecosystem to be copied and run on Bitcoin within minutes.
Users can also withdraw money to a Web3 wallet connected to Layer-2 networks like MetaMask, directly from cryptocurrency exchanges such as Coinbase, Binance, and Kraken, without using wrapped assets or leaving the Bitcoin network. Botanix Labs wrote a technical review for the EVM Layer-2 protocol in June 2023, and an early-stage test network version was released in November.
Botanix claims that since then, the test network has produced over 200,000 active addresses, 10,000 experimental token launches, and dozens of decentralized applications ahead of Spiderchain’s expected main network launch early this summer. Among the announced Dapps are the decentralized exchange Bitzy and the Bitcoin-backed stablecoin Palladium.
