Gelato Network Raises $11 Million Series A to Develop Web 3.0 Automation

Dragonfly Capital Leads Raise With Top Blockchain & Technology VCs


Zug, Sept. 30, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Gelato Network, a protocol that has pioneered automating smart contract executions, today announced its Series A totalling more than $11 million. The raise was led by Dragonfly Capital, which aims to support the most promising projects in the decentralized economy, including DeFi protocols, NFT projects and Ethereum Layer-2 solutions. Gelato’s decentralized network of bots allows decentralized application (dapp) developers to deliver users the opportunity to interact with DeFi in ways that were previously not possible on a mass scale. 

The portfolio of strategically-chosen investors also includes ParaFi Capital, Nascent, IDEO CoLab Ventures, and Stani Kulechov, Founder and CEO of Aave. Following the raise, Gelato will continue building towards its mission of integrating with the industry’s leading DeFi protocols and aggregators, like Aave and Zerion, to offer automated transactions to their users.

“Automation is the heart of DeFi -- instead of people and companies, DeFi uses self-executing autonomous code,” said Haseeb Qureshi, Managing Partner of Dragonfly Capital. “Gelato takes this principle a step further to allow bots and scripts to become self-executing and autonomous, completely obviating costly protocol DevOps. We believe this is a core building block of Web 3.0 -- think Heroku for blockchain bots.”

The September 6th “flash crash” saw the value of all cryptocurrencies fall by 10% -- amounting to $300 billion, according to analytics platform CoinMarketCap. Platforms such as Instadapp or B.Protocol who are utilizing Gelato Network’ infrastructure protected traders from experiencing major losses by automatically rebalancing collateral, refinancing vaults, and executing trades when pre-set conditions are met. Ultimately, Gelato aims to deliver the benefits of automation across all decentralized networks.

Hilmar Orth, Co-Founder and Legendary Member of Gelato Network added, “At Gelato, we firmly believe the future of DeFi is automated. Despite the endless capabilities of automation to amplify DeFi protocols, this is an area that has lacked until now. Gelato’s vision is to become the backbone of automated smart contract execution.”

Most recently, Gelato Network closed its GEL token sale to allow for community governance of the protocol. Over the coming months, Gelato Network plans to unveil significant integrations and partnerships, as well as upgraded functionality and use cases in line with the product roadmap. 

To learn more about smart contract automation on Ethereum and beyond, visit gelato.network, and follow Gelato Network on Twitter for updates.

Commentary From Investors

"Today, centralized bot networks underpin most automated smart contract functionality in blockchain-based applications,” said Nick Chong, Investment Analyst at ParaFi Capital. “Gelato introduces a decentralized network of bots that enables the seamless automation of smart contract functions and the creation of serverless applications. We are thrilled to support the Gelato team as they continue to build core middleware for networks like Ethereum." 

“Gelato is trying to solve a key problem for DeFi and Web 3.0 in general, being that many functions in decentralized applications have to be executed conditionally or repeatedly in order for the applications to operate as desired,” commented Stani Kulechov, Founder & CEO of Aave. “These operations require external servers to execute them automatically at the right time. Without those, DeFi as we know it today, would not exist. Gelato is providing dApps teams with an easy to use and reliable network that takes care of all their automation needs. I'm excited to see where this project will go in the future.”

“DeFi protocols are able to streamline complex processes from traditional finance, but ironically there are many pieces that are difficult to automate due to how blockchains work,” said Dan Elitzer, Co-Founder of Nascent. “Gelato provides that missing piece of automation, allowing DeFi applications to deliver the top-tier UX necessary to enable true global-scale adoption.”

“DeFi is evolving at a breakneck pace,” added Paris Rouzati, General Partner of IDEO CoLab Ventures. “It’s imperative we equip developers and users within the space with the best tools to seamlessly navigate the changing ecosystem. We believe automation will be the tool to elevate DeFi in a meaningful and lasting way.” 

ABOUT GELATO NETWORK: 

Gelato Network is the first protocol that automates smart contract executions on Ethereum and beyond. They are building the underlying infrastructure enabling reliable automation on top of Ethereum and with it a key part of the Web3 middleware stack, enabling trustless, automated flows of value between all smart contracts and upcoming Layer 2 networks.

Follow them on Twitter, and join the conversation on Telegram.

Attachments

 
Luis Schliesske and Hilmar Orth at Full Node Berlin

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