Gasp (formerly Mangata Finance), a cross-chain swap protocol built on EigenLayer, has raised $5 million in a private funding round.
The round brought Gasp's fully diluted token valuation to $80 million, a source told The Block.
Mangata Finance, a cross-chain swap protocol, has rebranded as Gasp and announced a new $5 million private funding round in anticipation of a testnet launch as EigenLayer Active Validation Service or AVS.
Several investors, including Polychain Capital, CMS Holdings, Master Ventures, Token Metrics and Cluster Capital, backed the round, Gasp said on Wednesday. The round did not have a lead investor, but Cluster Capital contributed the largest portion at 30%, Gasp founder and CEO Peter Kris told The Block.
Gasp began its fundraising efforts last November and concluded them this month, Kris said, noting that the investment was structured as a secured round of SAFE (simple agreement for future equity).
A source with direct knowledge of the matter told The Block that the round brought Gasp's fully diluted token valuation to $80 million.
What is Gasp?
Gasp, formerly known as Mangata Finance, is a cross-chain swap protocol that currently supports transfers between Ethereum scaling networks such as Arbitrum and Optimism. Its goal is to eventually support all blockchains.
Gasp, originally incubated by Polychain, started in 2020 in the Polkadot ecosystem. However, it did not launch on the mainnet because the team was not confident in Polkadot, according to Kris. Gasp is currently developing on EigenLayer, a popular Ethereum replication protocol, and is set to launch its testnet as EigenLayer AVS in the coming weeks.
EigenLayer AVS uses Ethereum's privacy features through EigenLayer without creating its own consensus mechanisms. "The Gasp network relies on Ethereum to complete transactions through EigenLayer, making it one of the first EigenLayer AVS to be deployed," Kris said. He added that "Gasp on EigenLayer will make cross-chain atomic swaps as easy as calling a smart contract on Ethereum or any other connected chain."
Gasp mainnet and token launch
After a successful testnet, Gasp plans to proceed to mainnet and launch the token. Kris said that a new token called GASP will be introduced and broadcast to users, including Mangata X (MGX) token holders. "MGX is an economic testnet that we have been running since a year ago. MGX holders will receive a portion of the GASP airdrop," he said.
The Gasp team currently includes 22 people, with plans to expand, especially in marketing, Kris said. The latest round of private funding brings Gasp's total funding to date to about $11 million.
