Phi Labs Secures $21M Seed, Led by CoinFund and Hashed

Funding will go towards staff expansion, product development and building on Phi Labs’ protocol Archway in the Cosmos ecosystem

article-image

Source: Phi Labs

share

key takeaways

  • Other participants in the raise include 1confirmation, IDEO CoLab, Blockchain Capital, Wintermute and Figment
  • The team currently has around 20 full-time employees, with the hope of expanding to over 50 by year-end

Phi Labs, a contributor to an incentivized smart contract built on Cosmos, announced a $21 million seed round on Thursday. 

The raise, led by investment firms CoinFund and Hashed, will go towards staff expansion, product development and building on Phi Lab’s protocol Archway. The team currently has around 20 full-time employees, with the hope of hitting over 50 by year-end. 

Other participants in the round include 1confirmation, IDEO CoLab, Figment, Blockchain Capital, Wintermute, Chorus One, stake.fish, Lemniscap, Cosmostation and Hypersphere Ventures.

Archway is “one of the first smart contracting chains where any [decentralized app] developer can build on top of, and then access all the other assets throughout the Cosmos ecosystem,” Phi Labs Chief Executive Griffin Anderson told Blockworks. 

Archway, Anderson said, rewards developers via its protocol by sharing a portion of transaction fees and inflationary rewards generated on the Cosmos network. 

“[Smart contract platforms] all been kind of ideating on the trilemma around scalability, decentralization and security,” Billy Dishman, Principal at CoinFund, said. “And what is largely ignored is the idea of ideating and improving tokenomics on blockchains.”

“There are three main constituents within a blockchain. You have the validators, the users and the developers, and so far, no one [has] prioritized the developers.”
Archway is expected to launch sometime this year. The protocol’s tokens, according to Archway’s website, will not be offered in certain countries including the US, China, Zimbabwe, Albania and Venezuela.


Start your day with top crypto insights from David Canellis and Katherine Ross. Subscribe to the Empire newsletter.

Explore the growing intersection between crypto, macroeconomics, policy and finance with Ben Strack, Casey Wagner and Felix Jauvin. Subscribe to the Forward Guidance newsletter.

Get alpha directly in your inbox with the 0xResearch newsletter — market highlights, charts, degen trade ideas, governance updates, and more.

The Lightspeed newsletter is all things Solana, in your inbox, every day. Subscribe to daily Solana news from Jack Kubinec and Jeff Albus.

Tags

Upcoming Events

Javits Center North | 445 11th Ave

Tues - Thurs, March 18 - 20, 2025

Blockworks’ Digital Asset Summit (DAS) will feature conversations between the builders, allocators, and legislators who will shape the trajectory of the digital asset ecosystem in the US and abroad.

recent research

kamino cover.jpg

Research

Kamino has solidified its position as the leading money market on Solana and is emerging as a DeFi bluechip. Although DeFi competition is fierce, Kamino has kept iterating on its product to provide the best-in-class UX, paired with a robust risk management framework and battle-tested infrastructure. Given the rollout of Kamino Lend V2, the protocol may scale aggressively over the coming months, penetrating previously untapped markets in Solana DeFi.

article-image

In Friday’s Roundup, Jason Yanowitz said he doesn’t think we’ll see the markets “rip” until potentially January or even February

article-image

Why that the bull market might not start until 2025

article-image

August’s annual headline figure came in at 2.3% after an upward revision Thursday, so things are moving in the right direction 

article-image

MSTR’s stock price was roughly $248 at 2 pm ET Thursday

article-image

Ever since rates came off zero and fiscal deficits exploded, markets have started paying close attention to how the government is funding itself

article-image

Solana memecoins are collectively at an all-time high