Modular DEX protocol Valantis raises seed round at $40 million valuation

Valantis Labs, the developer behind the modular decentralized exchange (DEX) protocol Valantis, has raised $7.5 million in pre-seed and seed funding rounds.

The pre-seed round, worth $3.5 million, was raised in April 2023, while the $4 million seed round closed in September 2024, Valantis Labs co-founder Deven Matthews told The Block. Cyber Fund and Kraken Ventures co-led the pre-seed round, while SevenX Ventures led the seed round, Matthews said. Other participants included Semantic Ventures, Figment Capital, Robot Ventures, Anthony Sassano and Sandeep Nailwal.

Both rounds were structured as simple agreements for future equity (SAFE) with token warrants, Matthews said. The pre-seed round valued Valantis at $20 million, while the seed round doubled that valuation to $40 million, he added.

Valantis was initially formed as an internal project at the blockchain research and engineering firm Nethermind in July 2022. After eight months, the founding team spun off to establish Valantis Labs as an independent entity, said Matthews, a former chief strategy officer at Nethermind.

What is Valantis?

Valantis offers a modular framework to help developers build decentralized exchanges using composable "modules."

"Modules are composable, more intuitive and more powerful than hooks," Matthews claimed, referring to the hooks design of the top DEX protocol Uniswap V4. Hooks is a system that allows developers to customize and extend the behavior of liquidity pools.

With modules, "if one developer builds a dynamic fee mechanism, and another builds a new automated market maker (AMM) curve, they can be combined easily without any smart contract changes," Matthews said. He also criticized Uniswap V4 for fragmenting liquidity by restricting pools to two assets. In contrast, Valantis supports "any number of assets in the same pool," he said.

Valantis Labs partnered with Arrakis Finance to launch HOT-AMM, the first modular DEX built on the Valantis protocol. Since its launch in June, HOT-AMM has facilitated over $50 million in trading volume and currently holds more than $5 million in liquidity.

For comparison, Uniswap has facilitated over $55 billion in trading volume alone so far this month. Uniswap V4 is expected to go live by the end of the year.

The Valantis Labs team consists of seven members, with plans to remain lean and add a few engineering roles, Matthews said.

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