DeFi platform Curvance has emerged from stealth to secure a $3.6 million seed funding round, with contributions from more than 20 decentralized autonomous organizations and leading developers.
The round included investments from Arbitrum developer Offchain Labs, cross-chain messaging platform Wormhole and angel investors including Polygon co-founder Sandeep Nailwal, according to a statement. Core contributors from crypto projects Scroll, Mantle, Eigenlayer, GMX, Curve Finance, Convex Finance, Balancer, Aura Finance and Pendle Finance – as well as DAOs including Frax Finance – also participated in the round.
The Curvance team describes the project as a DeFi “everything app” for lending and borrowing, designed to address the fragmentation between chains and protocols, which can serve as a barrier to entry. Curvance currently supports Ethereum and Layer 2s such as Arbitrum, Optimism, Scroll, Base and Polygon zkEVM – leveraging liquidity through decentralized exchanges such as Curve, Balancer, Velodrome, GMX and Pendle in an effort to improve inter-chain capital efficiency.
“Curvance will provide users of any blockchain with an easy route to participate in Polygon DeFi, with the potential to make onboarding easier than ever,” Nailwal said in the statement.
Expanding operations, supporting security audits and recruiting top talent
Curvance plans to use the funds to expand operations, boost security audits and recruit top talent in the DeFi market. “With this funding round, Curvance will be able to expand its value proposition by bringing forward a more accessible money market experience for both DeFi newcomers and experienced farmers and traders,” said Chris Carapola, co-founder of Curvance.
“When we started looking for funding, we chose to talk to our partners first, rather than just going to venture capital firms,” explains Michael Butcher, co-founder of Curvance. “In this way we ended up with a group of investors who care about our long-term success,” he said, adding that he expected Curvance to appear on testnet soon.
Curvance is not the only project looking to establish itself in the omni-chain money market sector. For example, Radiant Capital, built on top of LayerZero’s interoperability protocol, currently supports borrowing and lending across Ethereum, Arbitrum, and BNB Chain following a $10 million investment from Binance Labs in July. However, it could be more challenging for both to compete if established DeFi lenders like Aave and Compound also enter the niche.
