Solana Labs raises $314M via private token sale as ecosystem support expands

Andreessen Horowitz and Polychain Capital led the raise, with additional contributions from Alameda Research, Blockchange Ventures, CMS Holdings, Coinfund, CoinShares, Collab Currency, Memetic Capital and many others.

Cryptocurrency venture capital funds have poured hundreds of millions of dollars into Solana Labs to support further development and execution of decentralized applications and platforms building on Solana. 

Solana Labs, the blockchain development studio devoted to incubating Solana projects, announced Wednesday that it had raised $314.15 million through a private token sale — marking one of the largest private sales of the year.

The funding will be used to bootstrap existing and forthcoming decentralized applications and platforms building on Solana. It will also be used to establish a venture investing arm and trading desk dedicated to the Solana network.

Anatoly Yakovenko, founder and CEO of Solana Labs, outlined his network’s ambitious vision to onboard 1 billion users, describing the current blockchain environment as an “inflection point akin to the moment that PCs became widely accessible in the 1970s.” He continued:

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

“The next wave of innovation in crypto will happen at the application layer. It is easy to imagine countless use cases for crypto as a technology, but building them into real products that millions of people use requires the existence of a high-performance blockchain,” said Ali Yahya, a general partner at Andreessen Horowitz. “Solana is a next-generation blockchain that can meet that high bar.”

Solana has received considerable attention of late, with dozens of decentralized finance projects having launched on its platform since March. As Cointelegraph reported, one of those projects is Metaplex, a new NFT marketplace that helps artists and content creators monetize their customized collectibles.

The Solana ecosystem has also set up Solverse, an accelerator program that provides human resources and advisory support for projects building on the platform. Solverse has recruited 21 subject matter experts to advise Solana-based startups on their go-to-market strategy.