https://ift.tt/PFCRJK5 dApp Catalog raises $7.5M for its cross-chain ‘metaversal’ exchange

Ren Labs, creator of a protocol for cross-blockchain value exchange, today announced that Catalog, the first consumer application built on the Ren blockchain, has raised $7.5 million in a seed funding round. Devised by Ren Labs, Catalog is a DeFi app powering cross and multi-chain exchange with zero gas fees.

Now with the waitlist open, Catalog aims to be the first ‘metaversal’ decentralized exchange (DEX) and automatic market maker (AMM) to swap fungible and non-fungible assets across any blockchain. Through connecting assets and existing liquidity securely across blockchains in a single, user-friendly app, Catalog provides trustless and permissionless interoperability between chains.

Catalog Features

With low, flat-rate processing fees of only 0.3% per transaction, Catalog users will never have to worry about the high, unpredictable, and confusing gas fees that have frustrated Ethereum users and hindered the mainstream adoption of DeFi. In addition to enabling token swaps across blockchains, users can also earn interest on the assets they hold in their Catalog accounts without having to take any additional steps such as staking or adding funds to liquidity pools.

Planned features of Catalog also include seamless on and off-ramp experiences, including the ability to link a bank account for easy deposits and withdrawals. The addition of bank account linking means Catalog users will not need to hold any existing crypto to join the platform. Further, an intuitive user experience will make it easy to send another user tokens just by typing their username, rather than a complicated and hard-to-remember wallet address.

“We know that the future of DeFi will be cross-chain and multi-chain but there’s currently no simple, decentralized way to make transactions and conduct business across different blockchains. Catalog solves this by connecting any user instantly to the entire DeFi ecosystem through one, incredibly easy-to-use app. This is the first of many applications that will be built on the Ren blockchain to power this borderless vision and we’re incredibly excited for the future.” 
– Susruth Nadimpalli, Co-Founder of Ren Labs

Decentralized exchanges like Uniswap on Ethereum or Raydium on Solana have become critical to swapping assets built on those specific blockchains, Catalog will enable users to swap tokens on the same chain or those on other chains in seconds.

By leveraging the Ren technology that has already been used to process almost $10 billion in secure cross-chain swaps, Catalog benefits from the secure and complex cryptography leveraged by Ren that creates secret private keys unknown to even the network itself.

Led by Amber Group, investors included Multicoin Capital, Alameda Research, BlockTower, Cumberland, GBV Capital, Chiron Partners, Fisher8 Capital, LedgerPrime, Bixin, ROK Capital, and PetRock Capital.