Subject: VEN
Pontem Raises $6M from Lightspeed Venture Partners, Faction, Pantera, Wintermute, Kraken Ventures & more to Build Move Virtual Machine Products on EVM Blockchains
The $6M raise will be deployed to enable developers to build apps that are EVM and Move-compatible as well as to launch new user & dev-friendly products.
SINGAPORE, Jan. 11, 2024 /PRNewswire-PRWeb/ -- Pontem, a product development studio building Move and EVM-compatible products to enable a safer, more performant and developer-friendly Web3, announces the completion of a $6M round of financing co-led by Lightspeed Faction ("Faction") and Lightspeed Venture Partners with participation from Pantera Capital, Aptos Foundation, Wintermute, Altonomy, Shima Capital, Kraken Ventures, and other investors.
"We are grateful for the investment and support from our partners. Altogether, these VCs represent valuable resources in both traditional and crypto ventures. We are eager to build foundational products with Move and grow our community alongside them," said Alejo Pinto, co-founder, Pontem. "We aim to deploy this influx of capital to increase usage of Move beyond Aptos and Sui, empowering dapp teams with a programming language that enables devs to add new features that support the security and scalability needed for mass adoption. Vendor lock into the EVM is only a temporary problem. We aim to solve this problem on Ethereum to enable Web2 devs to more easily and confidently enter the space."
"Pontem is building critical primitives for the Move ecosystems. We are excited to support the project as they work to enable mass adoption on next generation blockchains," said Banafsheh Fathieh, Co-founding Partner, Faction.
"Pantera is excited to be investing into Pontem and help fuel the Move and Aptos ecosystem. We believe the team has been doing a tremendous job of building the necessary financial and technical infrastructure to bring consumers and developers to the decentralized web," said Paul Veradittakit, Managing Partner at Pantera Capital.
The funds will be allocated to support the development of Move Virtual Machine (VM) products on EVM-compatible blockchains such as Ethereum including the new Move L2 Lumio. Pontem, a leader in the Move ecosystem, began developing Move products in 2019 following the technology's initial release for Meta's permissioned Libra Blockchain (later renamed Diem). The team at Pontem, comprising founders with experience at IBM Blockchain and pioneers of some of the earliest Proof of Stake (POS) blockchains, first secured funding in 2021. The initial funding was aimed at creating a permissionless version of the Libra Blockchain, incorporating the Move VM. As the Diem project transitioned into Aptos and Sui, attracting over $800 million in collective investments, Pontem seized the opportunity to develop essential infrastructure for the Move ecosystem, built on top of Aptos.
Move, a programming language derived from Rust, enables developers to create secure and highly efficient smart contracts. Unlike Ethereum's native virtual machine that utilizes Solidity, the Move VM offers enhanced throughput via parallel processing. Designed with a strong emphasis on security, Move aims to mitigate vulnerabilities, such as reentrancy attacks. It is increasingly appealing to Web2 developers from traditional tech and finance sectors, who are accustomed to static-type languages like Rust for mission critical applications. Pontem is optimistic about Move's widespread adoption and also plans to support SVM (Solana VM) and other prominent blockchain languages in their framework. This is part of their commitment to fostering language diversity within Ethereum's decentralized and censorship resistant architecture.
The raise will also be leveraged to support the launch of the new Move L2 Lumio, an Optimistic rollup on Ethereum that will leverage alternative L1s like Aptos to process transactions. Existing Pontem products deployed on Aptos, including the Pontem Wallet and Liquidswap DEX, have already garnered 40K weekly active users and up to $1M in daily volume, respectively.
Prior to this round, Pontem raised $4.5M in June 2021 via a private token sale led by Mechanism Capital and Kenetic Capital, alongside Delphi Ventures, and Animoca Brands. This brings their total funds raised to $10.5M. Pontem's technology was originally developed by team members of Aptos, an organization composed of former Diem project members.
For media inquiries, please contact Phil LeRoy at (310) 260-7901 or phil(at)melrosepr(dot)com.
About Pontem
Pontem is a product development studio building Move and EVM-compatible products to enable a more developer and user-friendly Web3. Pontem's Move VM platform empowers developers with the ability to build Move and EVM-based projects without reliance on Ethereum's complex programming language Solidity. Pontem's products include Pontem Wallet for the Aptos ecosystem, and Liquidswap AMM DEX, among others. Backed by Lightspeed, Pantera, and Delphi Digital, and other well-known VCs, Pontem is building foundational decentralized applications (dApps) and tooling to accelerate adoption and promote global financial inclusion powered by blockchains.
Media Contact
Phil LeRoy, Melrose PR, (310) 260-7901, [email protected], https://www.melrosepr.com/
SOURCE Pontem
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