Ex-Meta Engineer’s Layer-1 Blockchain Linera Raises $6M in New Funding

Linera, a layer-1 blockchain attempting to tackle scalability issues using ‘microchains,’ said it closed a new $6 million funding round led by venture capital fund Borderless Capital.

The firm – founded by a former Meta Novi (Meta’s digital wallet, which will terminate in September) engineer Mathieu Baudet – has now raised a total of $12 million in funding. Linera will be using the new funding for “expanding the team, launching a devnet and a testnet for the protocol and fostering a strategic presence in the APAC region while continuing to grow their developer academy,” the company said in a statement.

The layer-1 is pioneering the idea of “microchains” within the blockchain, according to the press release. “The competition for blockspace in traditional layer-1 blockchains, coupled with limited production rates and block sizes, creates a bottleneck during traffic peaks, leaving users outpriced or delayed, rendering the infrastructure effectively unavailable,” the press release said.

Linera is battling this issue by adding smaller chains into its network rather than increasing the size or production rate of the blocks. This model allows each user to have its lightweight chains, which integrate into browser extensions and mobile devices for Web3 app interactions within the users’ wallets.

The project is looking to bring similar expansion capabilities of Web2 into Web3 apps by allowing an unlimited number of smaller user chains, said the release.

The investors in the new round include Laser Digital Ventures (Nomura), Flow Traders and Eterna Capital. A16z crypto led the company’s initial seed round last year alongside Tribe Capital.