Coin98 Labs, the DeFi arm of Coin98, which runs the biggest crypto fund in Vietnam, has raised a seed round led by Hashed, ParaFi Capital, Multicoin Capital, and Spartan Group.

It comes a week after Forbes reported that Alameda, one of the top funds in the U.S., invested $4 million in Coin98 Labs.

Coin98 Labs is building a cross-chain DeFi ecosystem in Southeast Asia. Its products allow users to interact with many blockchain networks at once, which makes it easier for casual users to access DeFi across many ecosystems.

Coin98 Wallet, for example, which is crypto’s first multi-chain web-wallet, enables users to interact with various blockchains, like Solana and Binance Smart Chain, on one interface.

This cross-chain aspect of Coin98 Labs’ ecosystem has led its adoption to grow rapidly in Southeast Asia.

Mable Jiang, a partner at Multicoin Capital, said that DeFi is about both global liquidity and local user demand. Jiang stated that Multicoin believes Coin98 is the right team to lead this thesis.

“We’re excited to back Coin98 as a market leader that has shown extraordinary ability to grow in the past few months. DeFi, as an important part of Web 3 Applications, is about both global liquidity and local user demand. We believe Coin98 is the right team that knows its users to capitalize on this thesis,” Jiang said.

ParaFi Capital and Multicoin Capital are top crypto funds in the U.S. based on assets under management (AUM), alongside the likes of Paradigm and Polychain.

Hashed and Spartan Group are considered to be two of the biggest crypto venture capital funds in Asia that focus on DeFi.

Kelvin Koh, a partner at Spartan Group, said that Coin98 is evolving into a leading DeFi platform in Asia, after securing over 200,000 users.

“Spartan Group is excited to be one of the major investors in Coin98. With over 200K users and multi-chain support, Coin98 is becoming one of the leading DeFi platforms in Asia,” Koh noted.

Coin98 Labs’ focus on building a cross-chain DeFi ecosystem comes at a critical juncture because alternative blockchain networks other than Ethereum are seeing an increase in popularity.

In recent months, Binance Smart Chain, in particular, has seen a rapid spike in momentum in both user activity and the daily transaction volume.

There are growing expectations that other major blockchains, such as Solana and Polkadot, would also see a spike in adoption in the medium to long term.

Thanh Le, the founder of Coin98 Finance, emphasized that the vision of Coin98 Wallet and Exchange, and other upcoming products is to help mainstream users access DeFi services.

“We are pleased to have our valued investors accompany us. Actually, financial support is not our biggest goal in this fundraising round. Our top priority is the collaboration with like-minded DeFi builders, who will fight with us for years to come. With their support, Coin98 Exchange and upcoming products in our DeFi suite will come closer to our mission of helping everyone access DeFi services effortlessly,” Thanh said.

Source