Ellipsis Labs, the team behind Phoenix, a decentralized exchange on Solana, has secured $21 million in funding from Haun Ventures to introduce Atlas, a new blockchain designed to support “verifiable finance.”
Ellipsis Labs was founded by Eugene Chen and Jarry Xiao, who both have experience in high-frequency trading. According to Haun Ventures, Chen and Xiao’s “key insight” is that “high-performance financial products can rival traditional finance without sacrificing transparency, auditability, or censorship resistance.”
The firm aims to solve pressing issues in decentralized finance (DeFi), such as inefficient price discovery and high transaction costs, which hinder DeFi platforms from matching traditional finance standards. Since its 2023 launch, Phoenix has processed over $50 billion in trades on Solana, as per DefiLlama data.
Ellipsis Labs now plans to leverage the lessons learned from Phoenix to build Atlas. This new network will feature ultra-low fees and support high transaction throughput.
Atlas is set to launch as a layer-2 solution on Ethereum, with interoperability to access liquidity pools from both Ethereum and Solana. Key attributes of Atlas will include rapid transaction processing, dependable oracle updates, and robust sequencing for non-custodial, on-chain price discovery, as noted by Haun Ventures.
Founded in 2022, Haun Ventures bears the name of its founder Katie Haun, a former federal prosecutor and executive at Coinbase. Alongside a $20 million investment from Haun Ventures, an additional $1 million from other investors brought Ellipsis Labs’ latest funding round to $21 million.
Haun Ventures described this round as a “fast-follow” to Ellipsis Labs’ $20 million Series A, led by Paradigm in April.