Taiko Raises an Additional $15 Million in Series A Round

In its recent Series A funding round, Taiko successfully raised an additional $15 million.

We're excited to announce that Taiko Labs, the core development team behind the Taiko protocol, has raised $37M in total capital across three rounds!

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— Taiko 🥁 (@taikoxyz) March 2, 2024

The deal was led by Lightspeed Faction, Hashed, Generative Ventures, and Token Bay Capital. Additionally, Wintermute Ventures, Presto Labs, Flow Traders, Amber Group, OKX Ventures, GSR, and WW Ventures also participated in the funding round.

In total, Taiko has raised $37 million across three funding rounds since its inception. However, it’s currently unclear when Taiko initiated fundraising for the Series A round, and project co-founder Terence Lam declined to comment on the company’s structure and valuation.

How Taiko Plans to Utilize and Their Investment and Future Plans

The new investment will be used by the company to develop its product and expand its team in the future. Furthermore, Taiko has disclosed plans to establish an ecosystem development fund. Last December, Taiko announced its intention to allocate approximately $30 million for its second funding round.

Taiko is a zkEVM solution for Ethereum, serving as a layer-2 data transaction verification utilizing zero-knowledge proof technology while also being inherently compatible with the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM).

Positioning itself as a “Type 1” zkEVM, as defined by Vitalik Buterin, means it’s the most compatible solution with the EVM, facilitating easier scalability for the Ethereum layer-1. Unlike other layer-2 solutions that typically have their own sequencer network for rollup, Taiko directly relies on Ethereum’s verification infrastructure to organize transactions and blocks, inheriting absolute security and censorship resistance.

Related: Ethereum May Raise Gas Fee Limit to 33%

Taiko deployed the Katla testnet earlier this year, which is considered a significant milestone before the project transitions to the mainnet, scheduled for the end of this quarter. As of now, the project claims to have over 1.1 million wallets and 13 million transactions on Katla.

The layer-2 landscape is becoming increasingly competitive. According to L2Beat statistics, there are currently 44 active layer-2 projects contributing to a $33.14 billion TVL, not including the 34 upcoming solutions in the same segment. Some notable zkEVM projects in the cryptocurrency market include zkSync, Polygon zkEVM, Scroll, StarkNet, among others.