Helius – a vertically integrated developer platform that helps high-performance crypto applications build better, cheaper, and faster on Solana – announced its $9.5 million Series A round closing. The funding round was led by Foundation Capital, with participation from Reciprocal Ventures, 6th Man Ventures, Chapter One, Propel, Balaji Srinivasan, Anatoly Yakovenko, Raj Gokal, and Kyle Samani, and other Solana ecosystem founders.
While Solana is perhaps the most scalable, secure, and composable Layer 1 blockchain, it has created friction for some developers. And like other blockchains, scaling transactions and speed to meet growing demand has been a consistent challenge, and has forced developers to focus on building complex infrastructure and scaffolding rather than the applications themselves.
Launched during the 2022 crypto bear market by former Coinbase software engineer Mert Mumtaz and former Amazon Web Services software engineers Liam Vovk and Nicolas Pennie, Helius offers a full feature suite of powerful tools that allow developers to quickly and easily build their applications on Solana. And by eliminating the challenges presented by Solana’s immense scale, Helius enables developers to concentrate on enhancing user experience without needing to grapple with the intricacies of lower-level blockchain integrations, costly and unreliable RPC nodes, complex data streaming methods, and difficult on-chain indexing.
Helius will use the Series A funding to hire low-level systems and backend engineers. And it will also use the capital to enhance its deep technical stack to help further its mission of eliminating complexities and improving the entire Solana network from the bottom up.
KEY QUOTES:
“The biggest criticism of crypto to date has been the lack of useful applications that benefit everyday people. Most of the focus has been on speculation instead of tangible things producing real value. To change this, we need to make it as simple as possible for developers to build apps that are cheap, fast, and scalable. And this is the mission of Helius. We simplify and enhance the experience for developers on the highest-performing chain—Solana—by giving them the platform they need to build the best possible dApps in crypto. With our world-class team and investors, we are excited to advance our mission and help increase the probability of a crypto future.”
- Mert Mumtaz, CEO of Helius
“Most infrastructure providers in crypto build horizontally across chains and simply add an RPC and move on to a new chain. As we’ve learned, this approach often results in poorly built dApps and underperforming chains. Our team at Helius is committed to doubling down on Solana and vertically integrating through the entire stack, from the validator plugins all the way up to open-source developer SDKs. In this way, we are effectively removing barriers for forward-thinking developers and shaping the future of Web3.”
- Liam Vovk, CTO of Helius
“We are proud of Helius’ evolution and our ability to drive value for the Solana ecosystem. During a challenging time in the crypto world with the FTX collapse, Helius has been a catalyst for growth and development across the space.”
- Nick Pennie, COO of Helius
“As one of Solana’s earliest venture investors back in the spring of 2018, we couldn’t be more thrilled to lead Helius’ Series A financing and partner with Mert, Liam, and Nick. This is a team that has been forged in the fire—intensely smart, fearless, and deeply connected to the purpose of accelerating the adoption of truly useful crypto applications.”
- Steve Vassallo, General Partner at Foundation Capital
“Helius has been committed to the Solana ecosystem since day one, and I believe that shows through in the quality of its products and its rapid growth. Mert, Liam, and Nick have proven to be some of the foremost thought leaders and technical developers within the entire blockchain ecosystem, and we’re incredibly excited to double down on the Helius team as they continue to drive and expand application development on Solana.”
- Craig Burel, Partner at Reciprocal Ventures
