Portal, a self-hosted layer-two wallet and true cross-chain decentralized exchange (DEX) on Bitcoin, has announced the completion of an $8.5 million investment round.
Participants in the funding round included Coinbase Ventures, Arrington XRP Capital, OKEx, Shima Ventures, Republic.co, LD Capital, GenBlock, Monday Capital, Taureon, Krypital, Autonomy Capital, and B21 Capital. Senior executives and founders of the following also took part: Ethereum, DFINITY, MobileCoin, Tether (USDT), Galaxy Digital, Bitcoin.com, Republic, Centre.io, Polymath, Æternity, Hedera Hashgraph, Blockstream, Reef Finance, GlobeDX, FIO, Portion, and 4K.
Michael Arrington, the founder of ArringtonXRP and TechCrunch, said:
“Decentralized cross-chain bridging is one of the hardest problems in crypto right now, especially as multiple blockchains gain real traction. We’re excited to see Portal’s Bitcoin-native approach to multichain transfers go live and provide an alternative bridging mechanism to the growing number of active on-chain users.”
Notably, Portal is a DeFi platform built on Bitcoin. Portal fastens and secures anonymous and zero-knowledge atomic swaps between Bitcoin and other digital assets. The platform also has the liquidity grade of centralized platforms with the non-custodial benefits of Bitcoin. With its sports markets, options, Peer peer (P2P) lending, and borrowing, all of which utilize P2P contracts, Portal brings DeFi to Bitcoin natively. The latest funding will be used in developing a self-governing and censorship-resistant DeFi on Bitcoin.
Both Layer-two and layer-three technology power Portal and are known as Fabric. The technologies enable deploying of censorship-proof layers atop the Bitcoin base layer. This facilitates private execution of smart contracts off-chain for P2P swaps, asset issuance, liquidity, staking, and derivatives among others.
Notably, Portal utilizes Bitcoin’s “hash time-locked contracts” to ensure users retain full control of funds to be traded, thereby eliminating counterparty risk and the risk of loss of funds. The platform also incentivizes private self-interested parties to become transaction intermediaries between mutually untrusting peers, while maintaining security.
According to Portal’s CEO Eric Martindale, the platform is delivering its promise of self-sovereignty to all. Bitcoin’s privacy, which is what Fabric upholds, has long been threatened by centralized exchanges, custodial wrapped tokens, false DEXs, and censorable ecosystems, he added.
Additionally, Martindale stated that Portal chose to build on Bitcoin since it believes the network provides the infrastructure on which the censorship-resistant internet of the future will be built. In the future, Portal plans to venture into P2P communications, social media, and financial transactions, he added.
More short-term goals include Portal’s public token sale on Repubic.co launchpad scheduled to take place in October.