SAN FRANCISCO — Nomad, a security-first cross-chain messaging protocol, announced crypto industry giants Coinbase Ventures, OpenSea, Crypto.com Capital, Wintermute, Gnosis, Algaé, and Polygon as participants in their April 2022 $22.4 million seed round.
“Because Nomad provides a trust-minimized protocol for cross-chain messaging, there are potential applications that go well beyond just token bridging,” said Anurag Arjun, co-founder of Polygon. “We look forward to seeing some of those exciting new use cases come to life on-chain.”
Nomad’s primary goal is to create a safer crypto ecosystem where blockchains can communicate seamlessly and securely with each other. With more than $1.5 billion stolen this year by hackers exposing vulnerabilities in cross-chain bridges, the industry is in need of security-first solutions that maximize the safety of users, funds, and messages.
“Nomad’s optimistic security model is the gold standard for trust-minimized cross-chain communication,” said Pranay Mohan, CEO and co-founder of Nomad. “Our team is comprised of some of the most renowned experts in the interoperability space, and their work is bringing us closer to a world where cross-chain communication can be done securely and cost-efficiently.”
Secure cross-chain messaging is key to uniting DeFi ecosystems and unlocking the true power and potential of blockspace across chains. Nomad’s protocol is tackling this head-on, utilizing optimistic verification to provide a high level of security that allows watchers to challenge messages via on-chain fraud proofs, without relying on custodians or validators. Unlike validator-based cross-chain bridges, Nomad only requires a single honest watcher to keep the entire system safe.
To date, Nomad has facilitated nearly $700M in total transaction volume for more than 14,000 unique users.