Decentralized exchange (DEX) aggregator 1inch has closed a $12 million funding round led by Pantera Capital.
Other backers include ParaFi Capital, Nima Capital, LAUNCHub Ventures, Spark Capital, gumi Cryptos, Blockchain Capital and angel investors Josh Hannah, Kain Warwick and Alexander Pack.
1inch plans to use the funds to build new products, CEO Sergej Kunz said in a press release. The funding round comes as the field of DEX aggregators – basically, front-ends for optimizing trading across the top protocols in decentralized finance (DeFi) – has grown increasingly crowded. The deal was structured as a simple agreement for future tokens (SAFT), Kunz said through a spokesperson.
“We have recently released version 2 of our protocol and there are several more products in the pipeline, which we’ll reveal soon,” Kunz said in a statement, promising to come up with “solutions that will really make a difference in the DeFi space.”
The v2 includes a new API, dubbed Pathfinder, which 1inch says provides better routing between DEXs and supports 21 protocols, ranging from Balancer to Mooniswap. The algorithm is capable of packing, unpacking and migrating collateral tokens from Aave and Compound as part of the swap path, 1inch said.
Paul Veradittakit, a partner at Pantera Capital, said 1inch is providing users “with powerful routing and trading infrastructure behind the scenes to get them the best rates.”
When asked how 1inch stands out from other DEX aggregators, Aleks Larsen, the general partner of Blockchain Capital’s venture funds, said the firm has “a bold vision to build the first vertically integrated DeFi platform.”
“We believe they are well-positioned to continue their leadership in DEX aggregation and expand the depth and breadth of their product offerings across DeFi markets,” he told CoinDesk in a Telegram message.
1inch launched in August after raising $2.8 million from Binance Labs, Galaxy Digital, Greenfield One, Libertus Capital, Dragonfly Capital, FTX, IOSG, LAUNCHub Ventures and Divergence Ventures.
The company also joined the liquidity mining frenzy started this summer, announcing its own farming program with 1INCH rewards for people committing tokens to WBTC, USDC, DAI and USDT pools on the Mooniswap DEX.
According to spokesperson Sergey Maslennikov, the 1INCH token launch is waiting for a “bunch of audits” to be completed.
The startup was co-founded by Kunz, previously a software engineer at the carmaker Porsche, and Anton Bukov, a former smart-contract developer at NEAR Protocol.
The funding round follows a handful of others in the DEX aggregator space, most recently a $3.1 million round in Slingshot led by Framework Ventures.
Zack Seward contributed reporting.