Neon Labs Raises $40M to Bring EVM Functionality to Solana

While they’re often pitted as rivals, investors have just piled $40 million into a project aiming to bring Ethereum’s computation engine to the Solana blockchain.

On Tuesday, Neon Labs announced a $40 million raise led by Jump Capital, including participation from Three Arrows Capital, Solana Capital, IDEO CoLab Ventures and others.

According to a Neon Labs press release, the raise was conducted via a token sale and “will be used to rapidly scale the Neon Labs team in categories spanning research, core development, marketing and business development,” as well as on a grants program.

Neon Labs is the developer of Neon, a software environment on Solana that lets developers build applications using the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM). The benefits of such an environment include writing smart contracts in familiar languages like Vyper and Solidity, using tools like wallet interface MetaMask, and easily being able to deploy forks of existing protocols like Aave – all while benefiting from Solana’s throughput and lower fees.

Per the Neon website, the project is aiming for a mainnet launch in November and is currently live on Solana testnet and devnets.

Projects porting the EVM to chains using alternative computation have proven to be popular among venture capital investors.

In October, Aurora – a project aiming to allow EVM computation on the NEAR blockchain – raised $12 million.