Published on July 13, 2022 at 12:26 pm
The fall in the price of bitcoin by more than 55% since March does not completely satisfy the appetites in the crypto-asset sector. Morpho Labs, the developer of an open source protocol for selling, buying and lending cryptocurrencies, raised $18 million (€17.9 million) in May through a token offering from a very fragmented shareholder base and is already committed to the virtual asset cause. Silicon Valley venture capitalist Andreessen Horowitz, through his a16z crypto vehicle, and his New Yorker Variant counterpart lead the round. One hundred investors participated in this operation in crypto-currencies, including a dozen slightly larger ones. There are American funds specializing in cryptocurrency: Nascent, Coinbase Ventures, Mechanism Capital and Standard Crypto. There are also more versatile venture capital funds, namely the British Semantic, Berliner Cherry Ventures, California-based Spark Capital. The young company has also convinced French funds and angels such as Alven, XAnge, Daphni, or even champions of the metaverse such as Nicolas Bacca, co-founder of Ledger, a cryptocurrency portfolio marketing company, or Frédéric Montagnon, creator of the NFT platform. Ariani. At the end of 2021, Morpho Labs has already raised €1.2 million from about thirty investors, including Semantic Ventures and Nascent. This seed round was also carried out by issuing tokens signed in cryptocurrencies. The young escape is not yet profitable.
Established in August 2021, the Paris-based startup was the result of the union of four students, including President Paul Frobo, who worked at Telecom Paris. They presented their solution based on the work of CNRS Research Director Vincent Danos. The protocol will be available in open source, which means it will be free. Therefore, the company intends to make money by providing services to its users, improving the protocol, or helping them integrate Morpho into their projects.