M^0, an innovator in a new decentralized infrastructure layer for cryptocurrency assets, has raised $35 million in Series A funding. The funding coincides with the launch of M^0’s core protocol and on-chain governance mechanism on the Ethereum mainnet.
The Series A funding round was led by Bain Capital Crypto, with participation from previous backers Galaxy Ventures, Wintermute Ventures, GSR, Caladan, and SCB 10X. The latest funding round follows a $22.5 million seed round led by Pantera Capital in 2023.
The stablecoin market, currently worth about $160 billion, is expected to grow to more than $9 trillion by 2028. Ripple recently announced that it would launch a stablecoin pegged to the US dollar.
M^0 is described as “money middleware” for the digital age, providing both a decentralized on-chain protocol and a suite of off-chain standards and APIs. This setup facilitates a federation of cryptocurrency issuers, allowing independent entities to leverage M^0’s middleware to create fungible cryptocurrency assets.
M^0’s leadership team includes veterans of MakerDAO and Circle, bringing a strong base of expertise in both DeFi and traditional financial systems. M^0’s financial infrastructure design adopts an institutional-level approach with the goal of empowering institutions to issue decentralized, interoperable, and fungible cryptocurrencies.
Stefan Cohen, Partner at Bain Capital Crypto, highlighted M^0’s unique approach. “Stablecoins are the largest and fastest-growing asset for public blockchain payments today. We expect this market to rapidly grow to trillions of dollars over the next decade.”
According to Cohen, M^0’s strategy of leveraging short-term government bonds to back stablecoins is impressive.
Pantera Capital’s Paul Veradittakit draws parallels between M^0’s ambitions and the legacies of major payments networks, saying, “What Visa, Mastercard and American Express did for payments, M^0 wants to do for value distribution. “He said.
At the core of M^0 technology is an innovative open federated mode that allows the issuance of stablecoins backed by high-quality reserve assets such as U.S. Treasury bonds. This model allows multiple entities to issue a unified, fungible cryptocurrency known as ‘M’. These miners produce ‘M’ by taking standardized, high-quality collateral, and connecting it to M^0’s decentralized platform after approval by the governance protocol. Independent institutions, known as validators, ensure continuous verification of collateral and compliance with standards.
Luca Prosperi, Chairman of the M^0 Foundation Council, emphasized the transition from outdated to modern financial infrastructure.
“We are transitioning from an outdated monetary infrastructure dominated by large, centralized parties to a much more modern federated framework for cryptocurrency issuance. We reject a future cluttered with non-interoperable and more dangerous forms of money,” Prosperi said in a statement.
Will Nuelle, General Partner at Galaxy Ventures, added: “The stablecoin sector continues to see innovation with waves of tokenized treasury and other products entering the market. However, one area where solutions are lacking is multi-issuance and interoperability, i.e. single currency.”
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