Arch Secures $7M Seed Round for BTC-Native Trading Platform

Arch, a Bitcoin-native program, secured a $7 million seed round sponsored by Multicoin Capital, with participation from other investors.

Multicoin Capital sponsored a $7 million seed round for Arch, a Bitcoin native program that allows bridgeless trading on the Bitcoin network. Big Brain Holdings, CMS Holdings, Portal Ventures, OKX Ventures, and Tangent also participated in the fundraising, according to a statement from Arch.

The media reported that Matt Mudano, co-founder, conducted the fundraising using a simple agreement for future equity (SAFE) with token warrants.

The business will use the money to accelerate the development of its bridgeless trading platform, which is based on Bitcoin and, according to Mudano, is not a layer-2 of Bitcoin.

According to Mudano, “most Layer 2s are designed to bridge assets to a side chain where users are forced to sacrifice custody and trust assumptions in order to introduce lower fee models or enhance scalability on top of the existing blockchains via additional layers.”

Arch does not force takers to bridge assets to an L2, allowing them to leverage programmable Bitcoin-based assets.

Mudano claims that user custody is what sets Arch apart from other L2. Mudano claims that regardless of the cryptocurrency wallet a user chooses, they make it simple for them to interact with applications on its platform. “To interact with applications on Arch, you don’t need to download specific wallets or bridge assets,” he stated.

Because Rust, the same programming language used by Solana, is fully integrated into the platform’s virtual machine, ArchVM, developers may effortlessly launch applications by learning the Bitcoin script.

More than 20 stealth-stage initiatives involving stablecoins, Dexes, cryptocurrency lending platforms, and other things have reportedly expressed interest in working with Mudano’s organization and have begun to migrate to Arch.

The corporation plans to launch the mainnet in the second half of 2024, ahead of the public devnet rollout.

“An incentive points program will be in place at that point to help bootstrap the ecosystem and highlight the first batch of applications built and launched on Bitcoin,” Mudano stated.