Quick Take
- 1inch Network has raised $175 million in a Series B funding round.
- The project is looking to serve institutional customers, including banks and hedge funds, said co-founder Sergej Kunz.
1inch Network, a crypto project behind the popular decentralized exchange (DEX) aggregator 1inch app, announced Wednesday that it has closed a $175 million Series B funding round.
The announcement comes three months after The Block reported that 1inch was raising at least $70 million in Series B funding. A month after that report, 1inch said it had increased the targeted raise amount to $175 million.
Amber Group led 1inch’s Series B and it was a token funding round. Other participants in the round include Jane Street, VanEck, Alameda Research, Celsius, Nexo, and Gemini Frontier Fund.
1inch sold its tokens at a discounted price of $1.50 per token in the round, as The Block reported previously. The 1INCH token is currently trading at around $3.60. The firm said it sold the tokens at a discounted price as it wanted to bring visionary investors on board to help scale the Network.
Serving institutional customers
With fresh capital at hand, 1inch Network is looking to serve institutional customers, including banks and hedge funds, co-founder Sergej Kunz told The Block.
To that end, the firm plans to get licensed in Europe and in the U.S., said Kunz. “First step is Europe,” he said, adding that 1inch is currently exploring available regulatory opportunities in Germany, Gibraltar, and Liechtenstein.
It is not clear what kind of licenses will 1inch Network get to compliantly serve institutions. Kunz said consultations with lawyers are going on in that regard.
1inch is already working on launching a product specifically for institutions called 1inch Pro. It was first revealed in September when the project began geofencing U.S. IP addresses. The product is expected to launch by the end of 2022 or in early 2023, said Kunz.
It will provide “permission pools” for institutions and permit only verified participants, said Kunz, adding that retail users would have to pass KYC and AML to access all the available liquidity sources and services which would run under the 1inch Pro product.
1inch Network is also looking to launch a new protocol in Q1 2022, which will use the 1INCH token as an “insurance token,” said Kunz. “Users can stake and cover the protocol from losses by taking risks and earning from the protocol’s fees,” he said.
The Series B round brings 1inch Network’s total funding to date to nearly $190 million. The project has previously raised $14.8 million in two funding rounds.
theblockcrypto
