Drift Labs has raised $25 million in a Series B funding round led by Multicoin Capital, with additional support from Blockchain Capital, Primitive Ventures, and Folius. This funding will help Drift expand its services on the Solana blockchain. It will focus on spot trading, derivatives trading, and prediction markets.
Cindy Leow, the co-founder of Drift Labs, plans to turn Drift into the Robinhood of crypto. In an interview, Leow said that Drift will be an all-in-one on-chain financial platform. The company said it will greatly improve its product portfolio with the new capital.
Drift was launched in 2021 and is a decentralised derivatives exchange based on the Solana blockchain. One key feature distinguishing Drift from other centralized exchanges, such as Coinbase or Binance is that it grants full control over the users’ funds. That is why it would be right to say that while other decentralized exchanges are already operating on Solana, Drift is different in its liquidity and product offerings, including borrowing, lending, and spot trading.
Drift Sees Surge in User Base with Over 200,000 Traders
Drift offers one of its key products, the perpetual future, where the user can place a bet on the future price of the assets without the need for an expiration date. However, this product is mostly for the sophisticated user. Drift does not allow trading forex, contract for differences, and Bitcoin in the United States and other jurisdictions except spot trading.
One important aspect of using Drift is cross-margining. It allows users to trade using different assets, including a combined concept of stablecoins, Solana, and wBTC. This feature makes trading more effective because users do not have to transition frequently from one cryptocurrency to another. At the time of writing, Drift has implemented cross-margin for 25 assets, including prominent DeFi coins.
Their current challenges of outages and the centralization issues of Solana directly lead to Lew’s opinion that it is the best platform for Drift. Drift has a user base of more than 200k and an overall trading volume of more than $50 billion; hence, investors’ interest in Drift has increased its funding to $52.5 million. It aims to expand the team from 25 to 50 employees next year, illustrating the company’s expansion strategy. More to this, Drift is also a female-friendly company, with 50% of its leadership team being dominated by females, which is a positive move in the crypto market.
