Solana Labs Raises $314 Million for the 'Next Phase' of Onboarding A Billion Users

Solana Labs, the developer of the Solana blockchain, has raised just over $314 million in a private token sale round led by Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) and Polychain Capital. Alameda Research, CMS Holdings, CoinShares, Jump Trading, Multicoin Capital, Sino Global Capital, and many others also participated in this round. As we reported, Solana was looking to raise up to $450 million, but the exact amount raised was actually $314,159,265 — “the mathematical constant pi multiplied by $100 million and rounded to the nearest dollar,” as reported by the Wall Street Journal. “Solana has the most ambitious technology roadmap in the blockchain,” said Sam Bankman Fried, CEO of FTX and Alameda Research.

“This is a blockchain that has the potential to support the DeFi ecosystem with global activity.”

Seen as a potential “Ethereum Killer,” Solana boasts of 1,200 transactions per second (TPS), costing only $0.00001 per transaction compared to Ethereum’s 15 TPS and an average cost of $6 per transaction. "We are convinced that scalability and throughput in blockchain are now a solved problem," said Solana Labs co-founder and CEO Anatoly Yakovenko. "

The next phase is onboarding a billion users. Solana was built from the ground up to accommodate this scale.”

With this fresh capital, Solana Labs aims to speed up the development of projects building on the blockchain and set up a venture investing arm for the Solana ecosystem. The $314 million transaction actually involved the purchase of SOL, an $11.6 billion market cap coin sitting at the 11th spot. As of writing, SOL has been trading $42.80, up 18% in the past 24 hours and 38% in the last 7-days. The coin, known for its resilience in red markets and one of the few coins to be recovered fast after retracements, is currently down only 25% from its all-time high of above $58 from last month. Apparently, besides DOGE, CUMMIES, SHIB, AKITA, and other meme coins, TikTok investors are also interested in the rapidly growing SOL token, helping prop up its prices. So far, in 2021, SOL is up over 2,200%. [deco-beg-single-coin-widget coin="SOL"]