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Hemi Labs Closes $15 Million Funding Round Led By Breyer Capital and Binance

Hemi Network aims to support applications that interact with both Bitcoin and Ethereum.
By: Samuel Haig and Mehab Qureshi • September 18, 2024
Hemi Labs Closes $15 Million Funding Round Led By Breyer Capital and Binance

Hemi Labs’ vision for a DeFi ecosystem leveraging both Bitcoin and Ethereum is attracting backing from major web3 investors.

On Sept. 18, Hemi Labs announced it had closed a $15 million funding round led by Binance Labs, Breyer Capital, and Big Brain Holdings. The round also featured participation from Crypto.com, HyperChain Capital, and Quantstamp, among others.

Hemi Labs was co-founded by Jeff Garzik, an early Bitcoin developer who previously worked alongside Satoshi Nakamoto, and Max Sanchez, a blockchain security pioneer. The team is building Hemi Network, a modular Layer 2 network supporting DeFi applications interacting with both Bitcoin and Ethereum.

“Hemi is transforming how Bitcoin and Ethereum interact, and not merely providing a bridge between the two largest networks in the blockchain ecosystem, but a supernetwork that most elegantly marries the capabilities of both,” said Sam Kim at Big Brain Holdings.

Binance Labs is among the largest crypto VC firms with assets under management of roughly $10 billion and a portfolio of more than 200 projects. Breyer Capital’s portfolio includes positions in Marvel, Epic Games, and 21st Century Fox, and early investments in Facebook, Circle, and Spotify. Big Brain Holdings is a prominent web3 fund focusing on the Solana ecosystem.

In July, Hemi Network launched an incentivized testnet for Hemi Network. The project aims to deploy on mainnet in Q4 2024, with the freshly raised funds earmarked to support the network's development.

Hemi Network

The Hemi Virtual Machine (hVM) integrates a full Bitcoin node within the Ethereum Virtual Machine, allowing developers to build smart contracts that interact with Bitcoin and Ethereum. Hemis says the hVM enables Bitcoin-native applications that were previously impractical, such as staking, lending, and MEV.

Hemi's Proof-of-Proof consensus mechanism allows the network to inherit Bitcoin’s security from Bitcoin’s Proof of Work miners. Hemi can also provide Bitcoin’s security to other blockchain networks as a service through a mechanism called Superfinality.

Hemi also offers cross-chain interoperability and sports programmable assets. Hemi launched a grant program for developers building on the network last year.

On Sept. 17, Hemi tapped RedStone, a modular oracle provider, to provide real-time decentralized data feeds to projects within the Hemi ecosystem.

Projects compete to unlock BitcoinFi

Hemi is among a growing cohort of projects seeking to bring smart contracts and DeFi to the Bitcoin ecosystem, with several networks enjoying growth amid the launch of staking services to Bitcoin.

Core recently emerged as the largest Bitcoin Layer 2 or sidechain by total value locked (TVL) with $398.2 million TVL, according to DeFi Llama. The Colend money market platform is Core's largest protocol with a $194.3 million TVL, followed by the Pell Network restaking protocol with $145.8 million, and the COREx decentralized exchange with $34.3 million.

Bitlayer ranks second among Bitcoin L3s with a $362 million TVL. Its largest protocol is Avalon — a lending protocol for Bitcoin staking derivatives — with $160 million, followed by DeSyn Liquid Strategy — a yield farming protocol — with $109.3 million, and Pell Network with $31 million.

Stacks is the third-largest Bitcoin L2 with $178 million, followed by Rootstock with $158 million, and Merlin with $139 million. The combined TVL of Bitcoin L2s and sidechains recently broke above $1 billion.

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