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TL;DR

• Uniswap Labs has recently raised $165M in Series B led by Polychain Capital and a number of major VC firms.

• The Uniswap decentralized exchange will now be deployed on zkSync, one of the main scaling solutions for Ethereum under development today.

• These events reassure our DeFi investment thesis, with key projects in the sector showing continued strength throughout the crypto winter.

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In the current bear market, some key crypto projects continue to gain momentum. In July, we wrote an article on the strength of DeFi during the ongoing crypto winter, and covered how the decentralized exchange (DEX) Uniswap has rivaled Coinbase’s traded volume since early 2022. Recently, Uniswap Labs, the company behind the DEX in the DeFi ecosystem of Ethereum, raised $165M in Series B funding led by Polychain Capital and with participation from longtime investors a16z crypto, Paradigm, SV Angle, and Variant.

According to the public announcement made by the creator of the Uniswap protocol, Hayden Adams, Uniswap Labs will bring “the powerful simplicity and security that has defined the Uniswap Protocol to even more people across the world by investing in our web app and developer tools, launching NFTs, moving into mobile — and more!” Chris Dixon, partner at VC firm a16z, stated that these new products are “what we need at this moment in web3.” In addition, the protocol’s on-chain governance has also recently approved the deployment of Uniswap on zkSync, one of the zkEVM rollups leading the development of scaling solutions for Ethereum. 

 

“zkEVM rollups are second layer scaling solutions capable of executing any application designed for Ethereum, delivering significantly lower transaction costs for end-users and higher transaction throughput without compromising security.”

 

The two recent Uniswap events reassure our vision that bear markets are a great opportunity for blue-chip crypto projects to keep on building, and may help the next wave of crypto adoption surpass what we’ve experienced in recent years. As investments continue to come and technology advances, so does our confidence that DeFi will continue to be one of the major use cases propelling the growth of the crypto asset space.

 

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