DEAL: ZRX gains 15% as 0x Labs raises $70 million

0x Labs, a company that provides infrastructure for businesses to build in the decentralized exchange (DEX) space, has raised a $70 million Series B led by Greylock. The news caused excitement amongst its native token holders, as it gained 15% despite bearish market conditions.

DEXs are cryptocurrency exchanges that allow for peer-to-peer transactions to occur without the need for an intermediary, as is the case for a centralized exchange such as Coinbase or Kraken. Other participants in the funding round include Pantera, OpenSea and Jump Capital.

ZRX token has seen its market capitalization rally by over 15% to currently stand at $715.75 million. Its trading volume has also increased by over 200% as news spread of the platform use cases. The majority of the volume comes from Binance, Coinbase and Bithumb, which collectively account for approximately 19% of the volume.

0x Labs touts it provides developers and businesses with the ability to incorporate DEX functionality into applications. Most recently, the platform partnered with Coinbase, who is also an investor in this round so that the company could launch its own NFT marketplace last week.

0x Labs also offers a liquidity application programming interface that developers can use to split up transactions between decentralized exchanges to find the best prices and throughput. Supported Dexes include Uniswap, Curve and Oasis.

The announcement explained that the funds raised will be used to integrate new chains such as Solana, expand support for its NFT swaps feature and grow its DEX aggregator product Matcha.

According to The Block Research, trade volumes for Matcha reached a high of $4.86 billion in January of this year.

Last week, 0x Labs’ native ZRX token soared 47% after an announcement that 0x Labs would power the NFT marketplace of Coinbase (COIN), which operates the second-largest crypto exchange in terms of the trading volume.

The news follows similar funding rounds in this space. Most recently, CoW protocol, which underlines the decentralized exchange CowSwap, raised $23 million via a token round.

This is not 0x Labs’ first fundraising round as the platform raised $15 million in February 2021 led by Pantera, which is also a participant in the firm’s latest funding round.