Borderless Capital Funds Wormhole Startups

The launch of a $50 million fund to assist startups that use the Wormhole cross-chain messaging protocol was announced on May 18.

The new fund is managed by venture capital firm Borderless Capital and is supported by more than 20 other blockchain development teams and venture capital firms, including Circle, Polygon Ventures, Solana Foundation, and JumpCrypto, among others.

The fund will assist startups that are “innovating cutting-edge apps, infrastructure, or tools that span multiple ecosystems,” according to the fund’s application page on the Wormhole website, which also describes the fund as “anti-maxi,” or promoting the notion that multiple blockchains are necessary to solve users’ problems.

David Garcia, CEO and Managing Partner of Borderless Capital, opined that the new fund would contribute to the expansion of the Web3 economy and enable applications to attract new users:

“Our goal is to empower builders to transcend the limitations of individual ecosystems, paving the way for blockchain applications and protocols to realize their full potential.”

Wormhole is a protocol for cross-chain messaging. It enables blockchain networks to communicate with one another and is frequently used to transfer assets between networks.

Using Wormhole, a user could, for instance, transfer Ethereum (ETH) from the Ethereum network to the Solana network. It is connected to over twenty networks, according to the announcement.

In addition to LayerZero, Celer, and DeBridge, numerous other cross-chain messaging protocols exist.

In recent months, Wormhole has expanded its network of partners. In January, the cryptocurrency exchange Uniswap selected it as the official protocol for cross-chain governance between Ethereum and the BNB Network.

And on April 26, Wormhole integrated with Circle’s Cross-Chain Transfer Protocol to facilitate US dollar coin transfers from Ethereum to Avalanche.

However, Wormhole’s security has been the subject of controversy in the past. In February 2022, its Solana Bridge was hacked, resulting in $321 million in damages.

Later, developers patched the flawed code that led to the exploit and compensated all affected users.