On July 23, the first Bitcoin Layer 2 project based on BitVM, Bitlayer, announced the completion of a $11 million Series A financing round, led by leading investment institutions Franklin Templeton Digital Assets and ABCDE Capital, who had previously led the seed round for Bitlayer. Framework Ventures, the lead investor in the previous round, also participated in this round of financing.

In addition to the lead investors, other investment institutions such as Stake Capital Group, WAGMI Ventures, Skyland Ventures, Flow Traders, GSR Ventures, FalconX, Metalpha, 280 Capital, Presto Labs, Caladan, as well as prominent angel investors including DOMO, the founder of BRC20, and Brian Kang, co-founder of FactBlock KBW, also participated in this round of financing.

Bitlayer is a Bitcoin Layer 2 project strategically invested in by Franklin Templeton, a provider of Bitcoin spot ETF services. The collaboration between the two parties signifies an important milestone, indicating Bitlayer's leading position in technical innovation within the entire Bitcoin ecosystem, as well as the increasing recognition and support of blockchain technology by traditional financial institutions.

"We are honored to collaborate with top funds that are driving the development of the Bitlayer ecosystem," said Charlie Hu, co-founder of Bitlayer Labs. "The participation of leading institutions in Bitlayer's Series A financing demonstrates our leading position in the Bitcoin ecosystem. Our goal is to establish a Bitcoin-native Layer 2 above Bitcoin finality and create a historical moment for Bitcoin."

Regarding the lead investment in this round, BMAN, managing partner of ABCDE Capital, stated, "After leading the previous round of financing for Bitlayer, we are pleased to continue leading the Series A financing for Bitlayer. Bitlayer has stood out among Bitcoin Layer 2s, accumulating over $500 million in TVL and 300 ecosystem projects, and has built the most prosperous Bitcoin Layer 2 ecosystem. With its native validation on Bitcoin, Bitlayer will become the first native Bitcoin Layer 2, marking a groundbreaking moment in Bitcoin history."

Kevin Farrelly, managing partner at Franklin Templeton, stated, "We believe that Bitlayer's uniqueness and technology have the potential to unlock new use cases and opportunities for Bitcoin, and we look forward to collaborating with the Bitlayer team and other products exploring Bitcoin finance. This investment underscores our commitment to supporting innovation in the digital asset space."

Since its establishment, Bitlayer (https://www.bitlayer.org/) has been committed to developer deployment, ecosystem construction, and user acquisition. Currently, Bitlayer has achieved several milestones, including the release of the Bitlayer technical white paper, the launch of a developer incentive airdrop program, the launch of Mainnet-V1, the introduction of a Dapp leaderboard competition, a series of Bitlayer mining festivals, and has achieved many other accomplishments.

According to DeFiLlama's data (https://defillama.com/chains/Bitcoin%20Sidechains), the current total value locked (TVL) of assets on Bitcoin Layer 2 chains is approximately $1.2 billion, with Bitlayer accounting for 32.78% of the share, leading the TVL in this field. Following closely behind are Merlin, Rootstock, and CORE, with shares of 18.27%, 14.75%, and 13.61%, respectively.

In addition, Bitlayer is building the largest ecosystem for Bitcoin Layer 2, with hundreds of projects already being built on the Bitlayer network, covering various sectors including infrastructure and developer tools, wallets, DeFi, NFT, gaming and metaverse, as well as RWA, demonstrating its vigorous development.

Bitlayer's Future

For a long time, the Bitcoin community has been committed to achieving scalability while maintaining core security and decentralization principles. However, many existing solutions often fail to balance these three aspects, and there is a huge demand in the market for solutions that can simultaneously address these challenges.

The funds raised by Bitlayer in this round of financing will be used to strengthen Bitlayer's global expansion and support more teams in building native protocols on Bitlayer. By providing a faster and more cost-effective trading experience, Bitlayer will accelerate the application of Bitcoin in the DeFi field and pave the way for its widespread adoption.

Technically, since the launch of Mainnet-V1 on April 15 this year, the Bitlayer development team has been working on Mainnet-V2, which is a Bitcoin-native rollup supported by a Bitcoin-friendly proof system that combines ZK and fraud proofs for Layer 2 state transitions.

In the future, with the full support of strategic investors and ecosystem partners, Bitlayer will continue to drive significant growth and adoption of Bitcoin, becoming a leading infrastructure for Bitcoin Layer 2.

About Franklin Templeton Digital Assets

Franklin Templeton Digital Assets is a subsidiary of global investment management company Franklin Resources, Inc. [NYSE:BEN], which operates under the name Franklin Templeton and serves clients in over 150 countries. Since 2018, Franklin Templeton Digital Assets has been active in the digital asset ecosystem, building blockchain-based technical solutions, developing a range of investment strategies, and operating node validators.

About ABCDE

ABCDE is a venture capital firm focused on investing in leading crypto builders. Co-founded by Du Jun, co-founder of Huobi, and BMAN, a former internet and crypto entrepreneur, the two co-founders have over 10 years of experience in the crypto industry. The co-founders of ABCDE have built billion-dollar companies from scratch in the crypto industry, including listed companies (1611.HK), exchanges (Huobi), SaaS companies (ChainUP.com), media (CoinTime.com), and developer platforms (BeWater.com).

About Bitlayer

Bitlayer is the first Bitcoin-native Layer 2 based on BitVM. Bitlayer's core goal is to solve the trade-off between security and Turing completeness in Bitcoin Layer 2 through cryptographic innovation and blockchain engineering.

Bitlayer aims to become the computation layer for Bitcoin, introducing super scalability to Bitcoin while inheriting its security, and providing users with a high-throughput, low-cost trading experience.

Bitlayer official website: https://www.bitlayer.org/

Bitlayer official Twitter: https://twitter.com/BitLayerLabs

Bitlayer official Medium: https://medium.com/@Bitlayer

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