Former Facebook engineers at Mysten Labs raise $36M for Web3 infrastructure

Published at: Dec. 6, 2021

Mysten Labs, the research and development firm founded by former engineers from social media giant Facebook, has announced the completion of a $36 million funding round towards its goal developing a Web 3.0 infrastructure platform.

In a Monday announcement on Medium, the team behind Mysten Labs said the firm had raised $36 million in a Series A funding round led by Andreessen Horowitz with participation from Redpoint, Lightspeed, Coinbase Ventures, Electric Capital, Standard Crypto, NFX, Slow Ventures, Scribble Ventures, Samsung NEXT, and others. According to a CNBC report, CEO Evan Cheng said Mysten would use the funds to build the infrastructure necessary for cryptocurrency- and blockchain-focused firms to deliver technology.

“We believe fundamental limitations in existing crypto infrastructure are frustrating broader adoption of web3,” said Mysten’s team, citing the scalability of existing chains as well as the lack of interoperability of many smart contracts.

In addition to the development of Web 3.0 infrastructure, Mysten said it planned to launch a “next-generation NFT platform for the Metaverse” in 2022. The project is aimed at allowing users to more easily move assets across different virtual environments without sacrificing functionality.

Related: Sommelier partners with Mysten Labs to launch Cosmos smart contracts

Founded in September 2021 by former cryptographical program engineers behind the blockchain architecture for Facebook’s — now Meta's — crypto-payments platform Diem and mobile wallet Novi, Mysten Labs is led by CEO Evan Chang, CTO Sam Blackshear, COO Adeniyi Abiodun, and chief scientist George Danezis. The most recent head of Novi, David Marcus, announced on Dec. 1 he planned to step down by the end of the year. Meta — then Facebook — began piloting Novi in the United States and Guatemala in October.

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