DeFi Protocol Linear Finance Raises $1.8M in Seed Round

Decentralized finance (DeFi) protocol Linear Finance announced the completion of a $1.8 million seed round Wednesday.

• NGC Ventures, Hashed, CMS Holdings, Genesis Block and Kenetic Capital led the investment, while Alameda Research, Evernew Capital, Soul Capital, Moonrock Capital, Black Edge Capital and PANONY also participated, according to a press release.
• Alongside their investments, NGC founding partner Tony Gu and Hashed co-founder Ryan Kim will join Linear's advisory board.
• The funding will go towards accelerating the development of Linear's testnet and mainnet, as well as promoting its platform, the protocol's team said in a press release.
• Linear claims to be the first cross-chain compatible, decentralized delta-one asset protocol that can create, trade, and manage synthetic assets.
• “With DeFi, we are experiencing one of the most significant and important shifts in our cryptocurrency ecosystem," said Linear co-founder Kevin Tai.
• Linear's new investors bring experience in areas including financial innovation, key market expansion and roadmaps to institutional liquidity, Tai added.
• Linear Finance has begun integrating with Binance Smart Chain as a layer-two solution to solve challenges facing existing synthetic asset protocols, according to the announcement.
• The protocol is already working with existing DeFi projects, having announced last week a partnership with oracle network for off-chain data, Tellor.
• The public sale of Linear's tokens is expected in mid-September, a spokesperson told CoinDesk.

Correction (Sept. 8, 11:18 UTC): Corrected detail of which investors led the funding round.

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