Arch Labs Raises $7 Million to Develop Bitcoin-Native Application Platform

Arch Labs has secured a $7 million investment to develop a Bitcoin-native application platform.

The seed funding round was led by Multicoin Capital with other participants and contributors including Portal Ventures, OKX Ventures, Big Brain Holdings, CMS Holdings, Tangent, Cypher, and Newman Capital.

Arch is proud to be building and innovating in the Bitcoin ecosystem, alongside some of the industry's top funds and strategic partners.

Announcing the closing of our seed round led by @multicoincap, hear what they have to say about us:

"Arch Network's emergence is a direct… pic.twitter.com/jT6Qy6a45y

— Arch Network (@ArchNtwrk) May 9, 2024

Bridgeless Bitcoin-Native Network

The company planned to utilize this fund to advance Arch’s development of decentralized finance (DeFi) applications directly on the Bitcoin blockchain, bypassing the need for secondary layers or bridges.

The reliance on secondary layers often complicates the user experience and compromise the inherent security benefits of operating directly on the Bitcoin network.

“Ordinals marked a foundational shift in Bitcoin’s evolution. It signaled the beginning of a new era where Bitcoin could serve as more than just a payment ledger,” said Arch co-founder and CEO Matt Mudano.

“This moment paved the way for Arch,” stated Mudano. “We’re building on Bitcoin’s unmatched security and liquidity to unlock an entirely new application ecosystem on the world’s more secure and liquid blockchain.”

The funds were raised primarily for the expansion of the platform’s development team. By bringing on additional skilled developers, Arch Labs aims to accelerate the creation and refinement of decentralized applications.

Arch’s Features and Rollout Plan

Arch is a parallelized, proof-of-stake that features a Rust-based zkVM, known as the ArchVM, and a decentralized verifier network, forming a trustless execution environment within the blockchain.

“We’ve evaluated several Bitcoin Layer 2’s and all of them make the same set of trade offs that sacrifice security in exchange for speed,” said Multicoin Capital Investment Principal Vishal Kankani.

“Arch is explicitly not a Layer 2 in the sense that takers do not have to bridge assets to some untrusted chain to use it,” said Kankani.

In addition to expanding its team, Arch Labs is set on launching a public development network (devnet) followed by a mainnet release scheduled for the latter half of the year.

This progression will enable early testers and future users to explore the capabilities of the platform, improving stability and functionality before a full-scale public rollout.