Thruster Finance, a decentralized exchange protocol built on the Ethereum Layer 2 network Blast, has raised $7.5 million in a seed funding round.
Pantera Capital led the round, which included OKX Ventures, Mirana Ventures, ParaFi Capital, Manifold Ventures and Arche Fund (formerly Coin98 Ventures), Thruster said Thursday.
Angel investors including Santiago Santos, Frax founder Sam Kazemian, Pendle founder TN Lee, Stacked founder Alex Lin, Renzo founder Kratik Lodha and Axelar founder Georgios Vlachos also participated in the round.
Thruster began raising money for the seed round in late February, just a week before Blast’s Feb. 29 launch, and quickly closed the round last month, 0xFri, a pseudonymous Thruster contributor told The Block.
The round was structured as a simple future equity agreement (SAFE) plus token warrants and brought Thruster’s valuation to $70 million, 0xFri added.
What is Thruster?
Thruster launched in March as a DEX with the highest returns on Blast. It has quickly become the second-largest DeFi protocol on Ethereum Layer 2, with a total value of $320 million, according to DeFiLlama. facts. Thruster says it has amassed more than 100,000 users who collectively traded nearly $2 billion in volume within less than two months of launch.
“We saw Blast as an exciting new ecosystem to build on based on its returns and incentive-first model,” 0xFri said. “In DeFi, returns and incentives are the attention grabbers. As Blast creates a system that can achieve greater and more sustainable returns, more users and builders should flock to that chain than others.”
Blast is described as the first Ethereum Layer 2 network with native yield. Proceeds come from ether staking and real-world asset tokenization protocols. Proceeds from these protocols are automatically returned to Blast users. The default interest rate on Blast is 3.7% for ETH and 13% for stablecoins, according to Blast’s website. Blast currently has a TVL of $1.4 billion, according to DeFiLlama data.
‘Deep liquidity’
Thruster says it is a “deep liquidity” hub for the majority of Blast-native assets, and that more tokens will come as Blast protocols gradually roll out their tokens.
Thruster’s biggest competitor is Ambient, but Thruster differs on several fronts, including its diversity of assets, according to 0xFri, which said Thruster has more than 40 $100,000 liquidity pools, compared to fewer than five on Ambient.
Thruster’s integration-first approach to increasing returns for its liquidity providers and being Blast native also sets it apart from Ambient, which is also deployed on other blockchains, 0xFri added.
They went on to say that Thruster’s developers and growth team have previously contributed to several top 50 protocols, without providing specific details given the team’s pseudonymity.
There are currently about ten people working for Singapore-based Thruster, and 0xFri appears to be “significantly” expanding its engineering team to develop its roadmap.
Thruster’s roadmap includes increasing partnerships and integrations and improving the user interface and experience to match centralized exchanges.
“This fundraising will help us continue to work with leading builders to integrate Thruster products and liquidity into other top protocols in DeFi, NFTFi and more,” 0xFri said.
Disclaimer: Larry Cermak, CEO of The Block, is an angel investor in Blast.
