NEAR Lands $150M in 3AC-Led Raise

NEAR Protocol has raised $150 million in its latest funding round led by Three Arrows Capital. The NEAR token has surged on the news, gaining 6.6% in the past hour. 

Crypto Funds Invest in NEAR

Several prominent crypto funds are going long on NEAR.

NEAR Protocol announced Thursday that it has successfully closed a $150 million funding round to accelerate Web3 adoption. Su Zhu and Kyle Davies’ Three Arrows Capital led the round, with participation from crypto-native funds Mechanism Capital, Dragonfly Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, and Alameda Research, among others. Several angel investors also contributed to the raise, including Aave founder Stani Kulechov and PleasrDAO member Santiago R Santos.  

The recent funding round more than doubled the $65.9 million NEAR Protocol has raised thus far. The protocol’s previous cohort of global backers includes Pantera Capital, Coinbase Ventures, Blockchain.com, and Baidu Ventures.

In a blog post announcing the raise, NEAR explained how the funding would be used to accelerate the adoption of Web3 technologies, develop its regional hubs, and raise awareness for its brand. NEAR Foundation CEO Marieke Flament commented on the raise, saying:

“We are delighted to have such a fantastic list of backers supporting NEAR’s mission. We are looking forward to leveraging the funding to improve access to blockchain technology in an ever growing list of countries across the world.”

The NEAR token has surged on the news of the raise, jumping 6.6% over the past hour. It’s currently trading at $19.24, with the latest price spike putting the token up 113% over the past month.

Other Layer 1 blockchains received a similar boost after news of investment from prominent funds was released. Three Arrows Capital co-led a $230 million raise for the Layer 1 chain Avalanche in September, causing the AVAX token to soar in value. Since then, Avalanche has steadily climbed higher and is currently up over 68% since the announcement. 

NEAR’s ecosystem has grown over the last few months, putting the project in contention with other successful Layer 1 chains such as Solana, Terra, and Avalanche. In October, NEAR announced an $800 million ecosystem grants program to help projects building on the network. Of the $800 million, almost half is earmarked for the development of DeFi protocols. Currently, most of the DeFi activity on NEAR takes place on Aurora, the network’s Layer 2, Ethereum-compatible chain. According to data from DeFi Llama, Aurora is currently the nineteenth-largest DeFi network, with over $700 million of total value locked.

Disclosure: At the time of writing this feature, the author owned NEAR, SOL, LUNA, and several other cryptocurrencies.