Linera, the first blockchain network scalable via microchains, has successfully closed an additional $6M round, led by Borderless Capital. Founded by Mathieu Baudet, former Meta researcher on the Novi digital payments wallet and a cryptographic protocols specialist, Linera’s pioneering technology aims to bring web2 scalability to web3 applications by introducing an unlimited number of user chains powered by an elastically scalable network. 

Linera has now secured a total of $12M in seed funding, with the most recent $6 million follow-on investment round led by Borderless Capital. Notable participants include Laser Digital (Nomura), DFG, Jsquare, Cadenza, Block1, Eterna Capital, MH Ventures, Matrixport, L2IV, ArkStream, Flow Traders, GSR Markets, and Open Web Collective (OWC), alongside continued support from a16z crypto, Tribe Capital, and Cygni Capital, who participated in the initial seed round. 

“Among new web3 architectures emerging like the move away from a single monolithic blockchain, Linera’s microchains are a completely new and necessary evolution. Further, Linera’s capacity for linear scaling is designed to support millions and conceivably billions of simultaneous transactions. And, while unprecedented, this kind of performance and reliability is essential for web3 to actually scale applications like payments, messaging, trading, AI, and more to billions of users around the world,” said Alpen Sheth, Senior Partner at Borderless Capital. 

“Linera has made significant progress since we led their initial seed round last year, and we’re excited to expand our support for the project. Mathieu and the Linera team have designed a truly innovative multi-chain architecture that unlocks a broader design space for developers and their end users. We can’t wait to see how the ecosystem takes shape and the utilities it enables as Linera advances into the devnet and testnet phases,” said Ali Yahya, General Partner at a16z crypto.

Linera recently made its initial software development kit (SDK) available for testing, targeting Rust developers. Thanks to the new funding, Linera will be expanding the team, launching a devnet and a testnet for the protocol and fostering a strategic presence in the APAC region while continuing to grow their developer academy. 

From microchains to mass-scalable applications 

The competition for blockspace in traditional Layer 1 blockchains, coupled with limited production rates and block sizes, creates a bottleneck during traffic peaks, leaving users outpriced or delayed, rendering the infrastructure effectively unavailable. 

“We’ve taken a step back to completely redesign a blockchain infrastructure that scales from the start,” said Mathieu Baudet, founder and CEO of Linera. “Linera’s unique multi-chain architecture ensures predictable performance, responsiveness, and robust security at Internet scale.” 

“In the race to scale blockchain, an infrastructure that scales from the get-go will beat out any temporary patchwork done on existing chains in the long run,” says James Wo, founder and CEO of DFG. “We’re proud to support Linera’s robust multi-chain design that makes Web3 really as usable as Web2, finally.”

Linera empowers developers to create high-speed web3 applications used by a large number of active users in parallel, revolutionizing decentralized infrastructure for a variety of use cases, including retail payments, gaming micro-payments, messaging, proprietary trading, and blockchain bridges. 

The Linera system scales by adding chains, not by increasing the size or the production rate of blocks. Its groundbreaking microchain model grants each individual user their own lightweight chains, which integrate into browser extensions or mobile devices for streamlined web3 app interactions within their wallets. During times of high demand, Linera’s validators expand dynamically like elastic web services. 

Linera’s innovative design is rooted in the expertise that Mathieu Baudet acquired at Meta while contributing to the Libra (now Diem) blockchain and co-authoring the academic paper “FastPay“, which laid the foundations for the Linera protocol. Bernadette Cay, Linera’s COO, brings extensive experience in launching products from Google and MoPub, the mobile ad exchange acquired by Twitter.