The startup Umee, which is developing a ‘bridge’ between DeFi projects across different blockchains, closed a seed round totalling $6.3 million. It was led by Polychain Capital.
1/6 We are pleased to announce: Umee has raised a $6.3MM seed round for creating a Cross Chain DeFi Hub! The round was led by @polychain with participation from @IDEOVC,@AlamedaResearch,@cmsholdings, @BKBrianKelly,@coinbase,@Consensys, @tendermint_team. https://t.co/Rmh9hflCdX
— Umee 🌊 (@Umee_CrossChain) June 15, 2021
The round also saw participation from IDEO CoLab, Alameda Research, CMS Holdings, Coinbase Ventures, ConsenSys, Tendermint, and CEO BKCM Bryan Kelly.
The project is working on cross-chain-staking, where assets in one blockchain are used to interact with assets in another — a universal pool of capital for tokens from different networks.
To this end, Umee will leverage the IBC protocol from the Cosmos ecosystem and bridge-building technologies from the Gravity Bridge project.
“Umee will focus on interaction between Cosmos and Ethereum DeFi networks, and later on compatibility with projects from other blockchains”, according to an interview with CoinDesk founder and CEO of Umee, Brent Xu.
Previously he worked at ConsenSys and Tendermint, where he helped build Cosmos and IBC. Tendermint underpins networks such as Binance Smart Chain and Terra.
Ultimately the aim is to push the DeFi sector to the next stage of evolution, where interest rates in one network influence their size in another. This will give rise to concepts such as cross-chain staking yields, the time value of crypto assets, and the yield curve of interest rates in the DeFi sector more broadly.
The team plans to launch the platform after thorough testing of the protocol’s architecture and design. A governance token for Umee is planned.
As noted previously, in April Soramitsu announced the launch of an interchain DEX on the Polkaswap AMM in the Polkadot network.
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