Avalanche raises $250 million to boost layer-1 upgrade

• Avalanche has raised $250 million from Galaxy Digital, Dragonfly and ParaFi Capital among other investors.
• The token sale comes as Avalanche nears the mainnet launch of its layer-1 blockchain upgrade.

Avalanche has secured $250 million in a token sale fundraiser as the layer-1 blockchain looks to bring its upgrade to market.

Galaxy Digital, Dragonfly, and ParaFi Capital led the blockchain project’s fundraiser, with more than 40 investment firms participating. They include SkyBridge, SCB Limited, Hivemind, Big Brain Holdings, Hypersphere, Lvna Capital, Republic Capital, and Morgan Creek Digital.

Per an announcement on Dec. 12, other backers of the round include FinTech Collective, CMCC Global, Superscrypt, Cadenza, Chorus One, and Tané Labs.

Avalanche9000 upgrade

The locked token sale comes a few weeks after Avalanche9000, the project’s highly anticipated upgrade launched in a testnet. Avalanche is looking to make transactions and deployment of applications on the L1 cheaper by 99.9%.

“Our support of Avalanche, and the growth and scalability of blockchain protocols, is essential to the future of this industry,” Jason Urban, global head of trading at Galaxy, said.

“By helping Avalanche reach a broader institutional investor base, we are accelerating their ability to innovate and scale. At Galaxy, we are providing Avalanche with the strategic resources and services needed to foster institutional participation and long-term growth, ensuring they can lead the next wave of blockchain adoption with Avalanche9000,” Urban added.

Avalanche9000 targets ecosystem dominance across real-world asset tokenization, gaming, loyalty and rewards, and payments among other sectors. The project introduced a $40 million grant program that includes $2 million for referral rewards, to incentivize developer activity on Avalanche.

“Avalanche is uniquely positioned to be a driving force in the evolution of on-chain institutional finance,” Ben Forman, founder and managing partner of ParaFi Capital, said. “Architectural advantages like fast transaction finality and high throughput, combined with customizable virtual machines, make it an ideal platform for securely and compliantly issuing and managing tokenized assets.”