Multichain liquidity and data gateway provider Li.Fi has raised $17.5 million in a Series A fundraise co-led by crypto-native investment firms CoinFund and Superscrypt. The fundraise will help Li.Fi execute its long-term strategy, which aims to bring more users to Web3 by enabling tokens and orders to trade across any chain in a seamless way, Philipp Zentner, CEO at LI.FI told CoinDesk in an interview.

The importance of decentralized finance (DeFi) has reemerged as a trending topic in crypto after the collapse of centralized crypto exchange FTX. Investment firm Bernstein published a research note last month that said a decentralize finance (DeFi) revival was in the works, which is “far more sustainable, scalable, transparent and with improving token economics.”

Berlin-based Li.Fi helps developers navigate the increasingly fragmented collection of layer 1, layer 2 and layer 3 blockchains, the bridges that connect them and the decentralized exchanges that all exist in decentralized finance (DeFi). The firm offers an application programming interface (API) that developers can build on to create prototypes and go to market faster.

“For anyone who wants to build on that front-end infrastructure – and the also fragmented liquidity – it's a lot of integration overhead,” explained Zentner. “And that's a huge fallacy of sunk costs. You don’t know what is still up and running or what systems are getting breached or hacked. Systems can be out of liquidity. There might be a strategic change and you have to adopt the new ecosystem.”

“There's a lot of integration maintenance involved, and we take on that part by aggregating the most crucial DeFi infrastructure,” he continued.

Other participants in the round included Bloccelerate, L1 Digital, Circle, Factor, Perridon, Theta Capital, Three Point Capital, and Abra, among others. Li.Fi previously raised $5.5 million in a funding round last July that was led by 1kx.

DeFi CoinFund Venture Capital Funding Rounds

Brandy Betz

Brandy covered crypto-related venture capital deals for CoinDesk. She previously served as the Technology News Editor at Seeking Alpha and covered healthcare stocks for The Motley Fool. She doesn't currently own any substantial amount of crypto.