Elixir nears unicorn status following $8 million Series B funding round co-led by Mysten Labs and Maelstrom

Modular network project Elixir has raised $8 million in a Series B funding round co-led by Sui blockchain developer Mysten Labs and Arthur Hayes’ family office, Maelstrom.

Hayes himself, Manifold, Amber Group, GSR and Flowdesk also participated in the round.

The fresh capital brings the project close to unicorn status at an $800 million valuation — an eight-fold increase on Elixir's valuation following its $7.5 million Series A round in October, led by Hack VC. In addition to its $2.1 million seed round in January 2022, Elixir has raised more than $17 million in funding.

“Maelstrom is excited to be a supporter of Elixir’s vision from its seed round over two years ago, all through their latest Series B,” Maelstrom Chief Investment Officer Arthur Hayes said in a statement shared with The Block.

Elixir will use the funding to develop its decentralized network, which is designed to improve liquidity across order book exchanges. Elixir argues that the order book model — enabling traders to trade directly with each other — is more efficient than the dominant automated market maker decentralized exchange system, which relies on mathematical models and liquidity pools to facilitate the trading of token pairs.

“Elixir is proud to announce the close of our Series B fundraise ahead of a quickly approaching network mainnet launch,” Elixir CEO Philip Forte said. “This raise will further enable Elixir’s ambition to serve as the modular liquidity protocol powering Layer 1 and Layer 2 ecosystems, and the exchanges built on them.”

Elixir enables users to supply liquidity to pairs on order book exchanges to earn rewards, currently powering liquidity on exchanges like Vertex, Bluefin and RabbitX. The project also plans native integrations with dYdX, ApeX, Hyperliquid, Orderly Network and NFTPerp.

Additionally, Elixir announced its Apothecary initiative on Tuesday — a points-based system to help users track their contributions to the network ahead of its mainnet launch scheduled for August 2024.