Avalanche (AVAX) Garners $230 Million in A Recent Successful Token Sale

Avalanche, the proof-of-stake protocol which claims its smart contracts platform is the fastest in the blockchain space, has raised $230 million in a token sale to institutional investors. The capital raise, which closed in June, saw investors purchase the platform’s AVAX token instead of equity.

Polychain Capital and Singapore-based Three Arrows Capital led the round. It also included investors such as R/Crypto Fund, Dragonfly, CMS Holdings, Collab+Currency, Lvna Capital, angel investors and family offices.

This type of fundraising allows blockchain projects to raise capital from accredited investors in exchange for crypto tokens, much like initial coin offerings (ICOs).

Last year, Avalanche raised $42 million in a similar public token sale. The mid-2021 deal saw Avalanche place 72 million AVAX tokens on the market, with investors from 100 countries buying all of them in just under 4.5 hours.

Investment to be Used to Support DeFi Growth

Proceeds from the new Avalanche token sale will support and accelerate the rapid growth of decentralized finance or DeFi, enterprise applications, and other use cases on the Avalanche public blockchain.

Emin Gün Sirer, a director at the Avalanche Foundation, the organization behind the Avalanche blockchain, said,

“This will go to fostering the growth of the DeFi ecosystem, NFTs, collectibles, and also some new innovative systems that are coming out on top of this.”

He, however, remained coy on what exactly the “new innovative systems” were.

This news comes on the back of Avalanche’s native token, AVAX, outperforming all other top 20 cryptocurrencies in the past week. The token registered a 21.1% gain and currently has a market capitalization of about $13.3 billion, according to CoinGecko.

Avalanche, which launched in September 2020, counts more than 225 projects building on the platform. Including DeFi projects like The Graph, Chainlink, SushiSwap, Circle, and Tether.

$180 Million Avalanche Rush Initiative

In August, Avalanche was in the news when it launched a $180 million DeFi incentive. With dubbed the Avalanche Rush, to attract more decentralized finance assets and applications to the network. Major DeFi protocols such as Aave and Curve are participating in the scheme alongside BENQi. A liquidity protocol native to Avalanche.

The Avalanche Rush initiative follows the launch of a cross-chain bridge project. That enables the smooth transfer of assets between blockchains. In February, Avalanche unveiled the new bridge. The bridge connects it with the Ethereum network and allows DeFi users to transfer assets across the two networks.

Ever since Avalanche’s move, rival blockchains like Algorand. And Harmony have also stepped up to offer similar incentives to encourage the growth of DeFi on their networks. Algorand’s fund will come in 150 million ALGO, worth $334 million, to help out potential projects.