DeFi startup Umee raises additional $32 million in CoinList sale

Umee, a protocol building interoperable tools for decentralized finance (DeFi) users, has raised an additional $32 million through a Coinlist sale of its native UMEE tokens. 

Umee is building out a “cross chain DeFi hub,” which provides DeFi users with a number of interoperable tools that work across various chains and venues. The hub will house initial tools built by Umee, and additionally foster developers building on the initial offerings. It’s focused on creating tools for cross-chain interest rates, interchain leverage and multi-chain staking.

Just last June it raised $6.3 million from the likes of Polychain, Coinbase and others in a seed round. Now, its UMEE tokens have netted it an additional $32 million. The team sold the tokens through CoinList, a platform that enables the sale of digital assets before they appear on exchanges. 

Umee’s offering was the largest number of registrants in the history of CoinList sales, reaching more than 900,000 and selling out in an hour. An additional 64,000 token holders have been added to the Umee blockchain as a result of the sale. 

CEO Brent Xu said the team plans to use the newly raised funds to expand its engineering team. expand its legal compliance resources, expand its underlying infrastructure and grow and develop its global community through additional marketing. 

To increase interoperability of the cross-chain hub, Umee is looking to build teams of 6-8 engineers for every blockchain network it connects to, including systems engineers, cryptography engineers and product managers. It’s hoping to connect from five to eight networks by the end of next year. 

Umee’s ecosystem will expand to support multiple blockchain bridging infrastructures to enable connection between different networks. Xu said the team plans to set up network testing infrastructure for its cross-chain bridges and lending and borrowing functionalities.

The team is planning its mainnet launch for mid-February 2022, according to a post. A beta webapp will be available in the coming days.