1inch Network closes $175M Series B funding round

After greatly expanding its goals for the round, decentralized exchange aggregator 1inch Network has closed a US$175 million Series B funding round from institutional investors, led by Amber Group, according to a company blog post.

Fast facts

• Joining Amber Group were about 50 other investors including VanEck, Alameda Research, Celsius and Gemini Frontier Fund who bought the network’s native token, 1INCH, at the discounted price of US$1.50 in the round. 1INCH was trading at US$3.44 at press time according to CoinMarketCap.

• Initially, the target was set for only US$70 million, but institutional demand from valuable backers meant the target was later increased to US$175 million.

• The new capital will be spent scaling the team, building new protocols and expanding the utility of the 1INCH token. It will also be spent on navigating the decentralized finance regulatory space in both the U.S. and Europe as the firm seeks to build its compliant product for institutional customers, 1inch Pro.

• “1inch also aims to become a gateway for institutions that want to be part of the DeFi space,” Sergej Kunz, co-founder of the 1inch Network, said in a statement. “The next US$1 trillion of assets entering DeFi will come from institutions rather than retail users, and 1inch would like to facilitate entry for them. We have already started work in that direction by attracting some key players from the traditional finance markets, and this collaboration will only accelerate over the next few years.”

• With the funding, 1inch also plans to further develop the decentralization of the 1inch decentralized autonomous organization (DAO), making it more democratic, thereby increasing the voting power of individual members. A DAO is a community of like-minded people working together toward a common interest without a central intermediary facilitated by blockchain technology. ConstitutionDAO was recently in the headlines as it made an unsuccessful attempt to purchase a rare copy of the U.S. Constitution at auction, though it has since disbanded.