(Bloomberg) — Despite slumping crypto prices, funding rounds for blockchain startups are still getting done. Moralis, a platform offering developer tools for web applications built on top of blockchains, has raised $40 million, the startup plans to announce on Wednesday.
Moralis, which launched its platform last June, is now valued at $215 million, according to people familiar with the details who asked not to be identified because the information is private.
Investors in the startup’s Series A funding round include Coinbase Ventures, the investment arm of crypto exchange Coinbase Global Inc., along with EQT Ventures, Fabric Ventures and Dispersion Capital. The company declined to name the investor leading the round.
Moralis co-founder and Chief Executive Officer Ivan Liljeqvist said that the startup is being used to help build out web3, a vision for a decentralized internet owned and managed by users. “[Web3] really democratizes the use of the internet, so you don’t have to go through the intermediaries that we have today, which normally is big tech,” he said.
Liljeqvist and his co-founder, Chief Operating Officer Filip Martinsson, are both Swedish, but Stockholm-based Moralis is a remote-first company. Martinsson said that the startup aims to make building on blockchain more accessible to people other than savvy engineers. A blockchain is a digital ledger that keeps a record of transactions in a decentralized way. The company’s users include individual developers as well as crypto wallet providers, nonfungible token marketplaces and gaming startups.
Users can build on blockchains that include Ethereum, Polygon, Solana, Binance Smart Chain and Avalanche, among others. While many decentralized applications are based on Ethereum, interest in other blockchains is growing, Liljeqvist said. “There is a clear trend that people want to build on more blockchains than just Ethereum,” he said.
Falling prices for digital currency in recent days have stirred investor fears of a broader and longer-lasting crypto rout. The price of Bitcoin fell below $30,000 on Monday during a five-day slide that saw the value of the world’s most widely held cryptocurrency decline by more than 20%. On Tuesday, shares of Moralis investor Coinbase tumbled about 16% in extended trading.
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