Cross-chain track welcomes new developments: LI.FI completes $29 million financing to build the "Google Maps" of the crypto world

Cross-Chain Infrastructure Protocol LI.FI Announces Completion of a $29 Million Series A Funding Round, Led Jointly by Multicoin Capital and CoinFund. This round brings LI.FI’s total funding to approximately $52 million. The company positions itself as a provider of cross-chain transaction price comparison and optimal path execution services for enterprises, with monthly trading volume surpassing $8 billion. This article will explore LI.FI’s funding details, business model, security incident reflections, and future development from multiple perspectives, providing an in-depth analysis of how LI.FI addresses the industry’s core pain points in blockchain ecosystem fragmentation and its market opportunities amid the trend of DeFi and mainstream financial integration.

Funding Details Reveal Capital Confidence, Eye-Catching Valuation and Growth

This Thursday, Beijing time, cross-chain aggregation protocol LI.FI officially announced its latest funding progress. The company successfully raised $29 million in this round, led by top industry investment firms Multicoin Capital and CoinFund. Following this round, LI.FI’s total capital raised since inception has reached about $52 million. Although the company’s founder and CEO Philipp Zentner did not disclose the specific valuation after this round, the strong support from the capital market clearly reflects high recognition of its business model and market prospects.

This is not LI.FI’s first major funding. Looking back at its development, in March 2023, the project completed a Series A round of $17.5 million, led jointly by CoinFund and Superscrypt, with participation from well-known institutions such as Circle. From the Series A to this latest round, in just over a year, LI.FI’s business scale has achieved leapfrog growth, with monthly trading volume increasing approximately 7 times from a year ago, which is undoubtedly a key driver attracting sustained investment.

Regarding this investment, Spencer Applebaum, investment partner at Multicoin Capital, provided a clear explanation. He pointed out that as cryptocurrency trading gradually becomes a core function of mainstream FinTech applications, the most challenging issue is how to enable seamless cooperation among fragmented blockchains, liquidity, and trade execution. LI.FI’s protocol precisely provides a single API interface for FinTech companies and Web3 wallets, capable of handling both transactions and cross-chain asset transfers simultaneously, completing complex on-chain routing and execution behind the scenes. This evaluation accurately summarizes LI.FI’s critical role in the current blockchain infrastructure space.

What is LI.FI? More Than Just a Bridge Aggregator

What is LI.FI? Simply put, it aims to be the “Google Flights” and “Google Maps” of the crypto finance space. Founder Philipp Zentner metaphorically described it in an interview with Forbes. When enterprises try to enter the crypto world, they immediately find assets and liquidity scattered across dozens of different blockchains. Traditional cross-chain methods often rely on various independent bridges, which tend to have security issues and high fees. The birth of LI.FI aims to solve this fundamental pain point.

The protocol provides a core service for enterprise clients: real-time price comparison and pathfinding for cross-chain transactions. It not only aggregates exchange rates and fee information from different bridges but also, more importantly, intelligently calculates the most efficient and cost-effective asset transfer paths for each transaction. This means that whether it is a simple token swap or a complex cross-chain asset transfer, users or enterprises do not need to manually compare dozens of DEXes and cross-chain bridges—the backend algorithms of LI.FI automatically handle all of this.

From a business model perspective, LI.FI has achieved profitability. Its revenue mainly comes from fees collected on transactions executed through its protocol. Currently, the company’s partner network exceeds 800, covering FinTech firms, broker applications, OTC desks, wallets, and digital banks, including Robinhood and some mainstream centralized exchanges (CEX). LI.FI’s value proposition lies in its ability to significantly shorten product launch times for partners and save substantial resources in R&D, system integration, and ongoing maintenance. As of October this year, its protocol’s monthly trading volume has reached $8 billion, and the team has expanded to over a hundred members.

Key Data and Development Milestones of LI.FI

• Latest Funding: $29 million, led by Multicoin Capital and CoinFund.
• Total Funding: Approximately $52 million.
• Historical Funding: Completed a $17.5 million Series A in March 2023.
• Monthly Trading Volume: $8 billion (as of October 2024).
• Year-over-Year Growth: Trading volume about 7 times that of a year ago.
• Partners: Over 800, including Robinhood and major CEXs.
• Team Size: Over 100 employees.
• Security Incident: In July 2024, a contract vulnerability caused by human error resulted in approximately $12 million in losses.

Lessons from Security Incidents and Risks in the Cross-Chain Track

Amid rapid development, LI.FI has also faced the severe test common to all DeFi protocols—security vulnerabilities. In July 2024, LI.FI published a detailed hacker incident report revealing an attack caused by “human error” during smart contract updates. The incident affected about 153 wallets and resulted in losses of nearly $12 million worth of stablecoins USDC, USDT, and DAI.

According to the report, the root cause of the vulnerability was an issue during transaction verification involving the shared LibSwap codebase used across multiple decentralized exchanges and other DeFi protocols. The LI.FI team admitted that the fundamental reason was “a human error during supervision and deployment.” Once the security flaw was detected, the team immediately launched emergency response procedures. This incident serves as a warning to the industry: even top-tier cross-chain infrastructure aimed at enhancing security and efficiency involves highly complex code and operational risks.

This event deeply reveals the inherent security challenges in the cross-chain sector. Cross-chain operations involve multiple smart contracts, communication standards across different chains, and complex fund custody logic—any lapse in these areas can lead to catastrophic consequences. For aggregators like LI.FI, security depends not only on their own code but also tightly on the security of integrated bridges and DEXs. Therefore, how to balance the pursuit of aggregation efficiency and optimal paths with building a rock-solid security system and conducting rigorous code audits and deployment processes remains a crucial ongoing question for LI.FI and the entire industry. From a positive perspective, openly disclosing incident details, accepting responsibility, and transparency reflect a maturing project.

Future Plans: From Asset Cross-Chain to Full-Scenario Financial Aggregation

With the new funding “ammunition,” LI.FI plans to expand its business scope from current token swaps and cross-chain transfers to broader trading fields. According to Philipp Zentner’s plan, the protocol will venture into perpetual contracts, yield farming opportunities, prediction markets, and lending markets. This means LI.FI’s vision is no longer limited to solving asset “movement” issues but aims to become the “liquidity routing hub” connecting the entire DeFi ecosystem and future on-chain financial world.

This expansion strategy aligns closely with the development trends in crypto finance. As Ethereum Layer 2 solutions, Solana, Avalanche, and other public chain ecosystems flourish, and RWA (Real World Assets), on-chain derivatives, and other sectors explode, user demand for seamless, low-cost interaction across different chains using various financial products will grow exponentially. If LI.FI can successfully integrate liquidity from these sectors, its “best path finding” value will be greatly amplified. Additionally, new capital will be used to expand the team to support capabilities in technology development, sales, business expansion, and marketing.

From an industry perspective, LI.FI’s rapid growth signifies an important step toward the specialization and refinement of Web3 infrastructure services. Early users and projects had to face chaotic cross-chain environments themselves, but now, the emergence of professional middleware protocols is abstracting this complexity. This lowers the entry barrier for traditional enterprises into crypto and accelerates mainstream adoption. It is foreseeable that future cross-chain aggregation competition will not only be about technology and liquidity but also about security, user experience, and ecosystem integration breadth.

LI.FI’s successful funding and clear roadmap mark the evolution of cross-chain interoperability from a technical concept to a vital infrastructure layer driving tangible growth in the crypto economy. Despite ongoing challenges related to security and integration, the capital’s investment with real funds indicates strong market value in solving blockchain “island” problems. For ordinary users and institutions, the future vision of a single entry point for easily accessing assets and financial services across the entire network is gradually becoming a reality through projects like LI.FI. The ultimate goal of cross-chain aggregation may be to realize a truly unified, efficient, and user-transparent global value internet.