PayPal Ventures has made its first layer 1 investment through investing in Aptos Labs project worth $200 million
Anticipated project created by the team behind the star project of Facebook known as Deim Blockcahin, Aptos Labs has now revealed about the investor during the funding round organized in March. Aptos Labs said that it was PayPal Ventures who put $200 million worth of investment in the project which was the first investment of a payment giant in such a layer 1 project.
Investment Partner at PayPal Ventures, Amman Bhasin said that the company believes in Aptos Labs’ work and what their team is doing in order to build a safe and scalable base level blockchain. He further stated that while keeping the promise of improvement of reliability, faster transactions, lower fees and security, the Aptos blockchain is created to make it compatible for both eligible for building new rails and compelling to cooperate with corporate clients and developers native to crypto.
It’s worth noting that PayPal was earlier involved in the initial launch of Facebook’s anticipated project Libra way back in June 2019. That indicated the non binding commitment of PayPal to become a Libra Consortium member. However, it was just the later part of the same year when the company pulled out of the project.
Funding round for Aptos Labs led by prominent venture capitalist firm Andreesen Horowitz (a16z) alongwith the participation of Three Arrows Capital, Multicoin Capital, Coinbase Ventures, ParaFi Capital and a16z alum Katie Haun along with others. However in the initial announcement about the funding round, there was no mention of PayPal Venture’s participation.
The team behind the Aptos Labs consisted of the original creators, designers, builders and researchers involved in the Diem blockchain, formerly known as Libra. The firm behind the project social media giant Meta Platforms, formerly known as Facebook, stated blockchain as the backbone of the stablecoin project in 2019 however the project had never got its portion of land, it never made it out due to regulatory obligations. It was earlier this year when Meta announced the shutdown of the Diem project and its technology and infrastructure was later sold to Silvergate Bank.
Source: https://www.thecoinrepublic.com/2022/06/04/did-you-know-that-paypal-ventures-was-behind-aptos-labs-200-million-funding-round/