Layer 2 scaling solution Polygon Labs is reportedly seeking up to $100 million in fresh capital to expand its payments business, according to The Information as cited by ChainCatcher. This targeted raise would formalize the company's pivot from general-purpose Layer-2 scaling to purpose-built consumer and merchant payment rails. The move follows over $250 million in deals for U.S. crypto payments firm Coinme and wallet-infra provider Sequence, giving Polygon a vertically integrated stack spanning fiat on- and off-ramps, card and ATM distribution, and developer APIs. CEO Marc Boiron has framed the strategy bluntly: *"Our ambition is to establish ourselves as a regulated payments entity in the U.S. Payments represent the most compelling use case," he told Reuters in January. The company's rails already process trillions in value and lead in non-USD stablecoin payments, positioning it in direct competition with Solana and other stablecoin networks.
Layer 1 blockchain Pharos Network has successfully raised $44 million in a Series A funding round, bringing its total funding to $52 million after an $8 million seed round in November 2024. According to reports from crypto.news, the latest funding round was led by Asian private equity funds and renewable energy firms listed in Hong Kong, with participation from regulated financial institutions in the city. The funding values Pharos at approximately $1 billion after Hong Kong-listed GCL New Energy subscribed about $24.7 million in equity. As reported by Pharos, the raise was structured as a bridge between traditional capital and crypto-native liquidity, reinforcing the company's positioning at the intersection of institutional finance and onchain markets.
The funding round attracted significant institutional backing, including a subsidiary of Japan's Sumitomo Corporation, crypto-native investor SNZ Holding, oracle provider Chainlink, and trading firm Flow Traders. As reported by crypto.news, these backers underscore Pharos' positioning at the intersection of traditional finance and decentralized finance. The network has also established partnerships with Chainlink and Centrifuge to launch the RealFi Alliance in February, aimed at standardizing RWA infrastructure development for institutional players. Led by former Ant Group executives and supported by a team from Ant, Microsoft Research, and Stanford, the company is positioning this round as fuel for execution in the institutional blockchain space.
Pharos positions itself as a financial-grade, asset-native Layer-1 blockchain built on deep-parallel execution architecture with built-in compliance, aimed at supporting real-time, asset-backed financial applications. According to the company's technical materials reported by crypto.news, the network aims to bridge over $50 trillion in RWAs and cross-chain capital into a modular, on-chain economy at internet scale. The company has announced partnerships with Centrifuge to distribute tokenized U.S. Treasuries and AAA-rated credit products onchain, positioning itself as a liquidity and distribution layer for assets such as JTRSY and JAAA. As reported by Pharos, the network is live on its Atlantic Ocean Testnet, which offers a mainnet view of performance and ecosystem preparedness, with the company having onboarded millions of users and hundreds of millions of unique addresses.
The funding round comes as tokenized real-world assets accelerate, with the tokenization space showing significant growth momentum. According to Pharos data, total real-world assets onchain have reached $24.3 billion, up from $14 billion at the beginning of the year. The company targets a market it values at $50 trillion, positioning itself in a rapidly expanding sector. Polygon has demonstrated strong performance metrics, with the network having surpassed $11.1 billion in lifetime non-USD stablecoin transfer volume and now handles more than 43% of all non-USD stablecoin transfers on public blockchains. Separate analytics from Allium show Polygon processed 178.1 million USD-stablecoin transactions in a single month, including 42.7 million operations in the last week of March alone, underscoring its role as a high-frequency payments rail.
