Ellipsis Labs Raises $20 Million in Series A Funding Led by Paradigm for DeFi Expansion

Ellipsis Labs, a prominent player in the crypto exchange sector, has secured $20 million in Series A funding, with Paradigm taking the lead in the investment round. In a recent post on X, the company said that the the funding will enable Ellipsis Labs to further expand its decentralized finance (DeFi) technology stack.Joining Paradigm in the investment round was Electric Capital, with additional support from notable figures such as Justin Drake and Mike Neuder from the Ethereum Foundation, Sreeram Kannan from EigenLayer, Anatoly Yakovenko from Solana Labs, Uri Klarman from bloXroute, and others.Ellipsis Labs is best known as the developer behind Phoenix, a decentralized exchange (DEX) featuring an on-chain order book built on the Solana blockchain. In August 2023, the company raised $3.3 million in seed funding, with Electric Capital leading the investment round.

Phoenix Boasts a TVL of $14 Million

Phoenix, the platform developed by Ellipsis Labs, currently boasts a total value locked (TVL) of $14.31 million and recorded a trading volume of $238.79 million in the past 24 hours, as per data from DefiLlama.Furthermore, DefiLlama ranks Phoenix as the eighth-largest DEX on Solana based on TVL.Phoenix aims to revolutionize trade settlements by eliminating the need for a “crank,” a mechanism that facilitates asynchronous trade settlements in blockchain ecosystems like Solana. This enables multiple transactions to occur simultaneously without waiting for each to finalize before initiating the next.

3/ Ellipsis Labs set out 1.5 years ago to build better on-chain liquidity primitives.

Our first protocol @PhoenixTrade is a fully on-chain orderbook on Solana, pairing the efficiency of orderbooks with the accessibility and transparency of DeFi.

— Ellipsis Labs (@ellipsis_labs) April 4, 2024

Additionally, Phoenix provides users with on-chain market event data, including placed limit orders, fills, and canceled limit orders, offering transparency and access to Phoenix’s complete activity history.

In an accompanying Medium post, Ellipsis Labs emphasizes the importance of combining the decentralized benefits of DeFi with the liquidity and efficiency found in traditional finance.

“Ellipsis Labs will be using the new funding to accelerate the progress of DeFi, up and down the stack.”

Paradigm Seeking to Raise $850 Million for New Fund

Paradigm, the leading investor in this funding round, is reportedly in discussions to raise up to $850 million for a new fund. This potential fundraise comes as crypto markets have witnessed a recovery in recent months. If successfully completed, it would be Paradigm’s largest raise since announcing a $2.5 billion fund in November 2021 during the peak of the previous bull run cycle, making it the largest cryptocurrency fund at that time.Paradigm’s investment portfolio includes notable crypto firms such as Coinbase, Blur, dYdX, Compound, and Citadel Securities. The firm is also leading a funding round aimed at elevating the valuation of Merkle Manufactory, the company behind the social network Farcaster, to the $1 billion mark.It is worth noting that Paradigm has also played a key role in supporting crypto firms in legal battles. In February, the crypto VC firm filed a legal brief in support of the prediction market platform Kalshi, which is currently in a legal battle against the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC).Last year, it also challenged the SEC’s attempt to expand its jurisdiction over crypto secondary markets.