Multichain, which offers interoperability tools for blockchains including Ethereum, Binance Smart Chain, and Avalanche, raises a $60M seed led by Binance Labs
Shortly after rebranding from Anyswap last week, Multichain raised $60 million in a seed round led by Binance Labs. — 389 Total views
Context & Ripple Effects
Multichain is arriving at this round with a fresh name: it rebranded from Anyswap just last week, and Binance Labs is now leading its first institutional check. The backing fits a long Binance pattern of building out its own chain stack, dating back to Binance's original Binance Chain announcement in 2018 — except here the money buys influence over a bridge that connects Binance Smart Chain to rivals like Ethereum and Avalanche rather than replacing them.
The raise also lands in a crowded interop-funding window: weeks earlier, Anoma raised $26M led by Polychain for best-rate crypto exchange infrastructure, showing VCs were treating cross-chain routing as its own investable layer rather than a feature of any single chain.
First-order effects
- Multichain exits its Anyswap rebrand with a $60M war chest and Binance Labs as anchor investor, giving it capital and an ecosystem sponsor at the moment its bridges carry traffic between Binance Smart Chain, Ethereum, and Avalanche.
Second-order effects
- Other layer-1 ecosystems face a choice between adopting a Binance-backed bridge or funding neutral alternatives — the Anoma raise shows Polychain already bankrolling a competing routing play.
- Bridge operators become a distinct competitive tier: whoever routes assets across chains captures fees and flow data that individual chains can't see, pressuring exchanges and DEXs built for single-chain liquidity.
Third-order effects
- Ecosystem-aligned venture arms look durable: Binance Labs' bet here foreshadows its successor YZi Labs repeating the playbook years later with a $50M seed into BNB Chain payments firm Better Payment Network, suggesting chain-affiliated capital becomes a standing feature of crypto funding.
- If cross-chain volume keeps consolidating through a few funded bridges, those bridges become systemic infrastructure whose security posture — the space firms like Halborn, which works with Ava Labs and Coinbase, serve — becomes a regulatory and insurance question for every connected chain.
The trend: Crypto capital is consolidating around cross-chain interoperability layers, with chain-affiliated venture arms like Binance Labs funding the plumbing that connects rival networks.