Bitlayer closes $9m extended series A round led by Polychain Capital

Bitlayer, a Layer 2 platform on Bitcoin, raised $9 million in an extended Series A funding round, bringing the total raised during the funding round to $25 million.

The Bitcoin (BTC) L2 network announced that venture capital firm Polychain Capital led the extended round, with asset manager Franklin Templeton, who co-led the first stage, returning to co-lead.

Bitlayer Labs emphasized that the funding round is a significant step ahead of the anticipated launch of Bitlayer V2. This version introduces a Bitcoin-specific rollup leveraging OpVM that preserves state transitions through validity proofs and fraud proofs.

Commenting on the technology, co-founder Kevin He said:

“It empowers Bitcoin to seamlessly integrate reliably into any programmable blockchain environment; “This will catalyze the rapid development and widespread adoption of a decentralized application ecosystem based on Bitcoin’s significant liquidity.”

Developing Bitcoin’s L2 ecosystem

The latest investment follows Bitlayer’s $5 million seed round, which closed in March 2024, and its $11 million Series A round in July. Bitlayer has gained momentum since launching its mainnet V1 on April 15, and the latest funding has strengthened investors’ confidence in the platform.

Bitlayer’s growth metrics include deployment of more than 280 decentralized applications across infrastructure, developer tools, decentralized finance, wallets, non-fungible tokens, and games. Real-world assets and metadata are also seeing notable activity on the network.

Important partnerships have emerged with platforms such as Ankr, Polyhedra, Particle Network and Babylon. Bitlayer Labs has also collaborated with blockchain security auditor Hacken and cloud computing provider AWS Cloud.

SCB Limited, Selini Capital and G-20 Group were among the supporters of the extended round. The July fundraising campaign received investment from Framework Ventures, Franklin Templeton, ABCDE and OKX Ventures, among others.