Dear Investors,
Following last month's announcement of Comma3 Ventures leading our funding round, I'm pleased to report that we’ve secured a co-lead in ABCDE Capital and now have line of sight to closing our pre-seed round.
We set out to raise $750k total but will be oversubscribing to $1Mn, which will bring our total funding to $2Mn.
We’re now closing out final commits. ABCDE Capital, Comma3 and Bixin have invested $650k.
Several Bitcoin and DeFi-focused funds are looking at the remaining $350k.
This round will provide over 15 months of runway, enabling us to launch our first pilots and secure initial revenue as we move forward in our mission to unlock over $600Bn of Bitcoin capital for DeFi.
Overview
Nadav Kohen, co-creator of the DLC specification and a pivotal figure in shaping the understanding of DLCs, has joined dlcBTC as a Technical Advisor.
He is a mathematician and cryptographer by training, and his deep understanding of DLCs will help us evolve our feature set to better service our customers
Security audits with CoinFabrik have been delayed by 2 weeks but are due to begin on Monday. This will push our mainnet launch to mid-October.
We are conducting daily meetings with CoinFabrik and remain committed to thorough auditing. We have also identified other auditor firms that we will be engaging in the future
We’ve won a Stacks Foundation grant to enable ordinals in DLCs. This will also enable advanced trading and lending of other sat-based assets, such as BRC-20 tokens. Ordinals support is slated for November or December.
Sales and Business Development
As of today, our sales pipeline includes 50 deals in Needs Analysis, 19 in Perception Analysis and 6 in Proposal/Quote stage. We’ve Closed Won $38k in YTD Revenue
dlcBTC has begun collaborating with Maple Finance to enable Bitcoin lending via DLCs.
Maple uses the EIP-4626 vault standard in use by AAVE and Compound as well, so we’re excited for the learnings that will emerge from this partnership
We are in discussions with a number of vault and bridge providers, with the goal of decentralizing Bitcoin deposits into lending platforms
We’ve also seen strong interest from multichain protocols who are looking to trade or borrow against ordinals and other sat-based assets
We are in testnet with both Hiro and Xverse wallets. Between these two alone, DLC.Link will be able to serve an audience of over 170,000 users
Marketing and PR
Our latest video explains how DLCs secure Bitcoin on-chain without the need for validators, avoiding the pitfalls of bridges and other wrapped tokens. See: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nSOmBWkPNko
We have also published a new article on "How do DLCs Utilize Schnorr Signatures?" providing insights into this essential aspect of our technology. Read it here: https://www.dlc.link/blog/how-do-dlcs-utilize-schnorr-signatures
Check out the Media section on our website. This section contains blog posts, case studies, videos and a newsroom where we highlight PR features. See: https://www.dlcbtc.com/media
We invite all investors to join our Telegram community at English: https://t.me/dlcbtc
For native Mandarin speakers, you can join our Chinese community at https://t.me/dlcbtc_cn
Follow us on Twitter at https://x.com/dlcBTC
Testimonials
A few recent quotes from our fans:
"We see dlcBTC as a foundational building block in DeFi, with the potential to become a multi-billion-dollar business. " — Nicole Liu, Comma 3 Ventures
“dlcBTC is becoming Layer Zero within the Bitcoin ecosystem” – Kathy Zhu, Old Fashion Research
"dlcBTC is making Bitcoin more composable & usable in DeFi" – Oliver Birch, Global Head, Chainlink BUILD Program
"You're sovereign Bitcoin for everything else” – Leading Bitcoin Investment Fund
Product
Wallet Integration: We have integrated with Hiro wallet, marking our second major wallet integration! Hiro now supports DLC signing.
Over the coming months, we plan to build awareness around what this feature enables for protocols on Stacksm, Ethereum and other chains
Revised Liquidation Design: We've modified our liquidation process so that upon the close of a DLC, funds are sent directly to the lender (or a party affiliated with the lender, such as an OTC desk).
This change eliminates the need for dlcBTC to act as a counterparty and hold funds, thereby simplifying our operational structure and significantly reducing regulatory and risk factors related to custody
Alpha Attestation Network Launched: Slightly ahead of schedule, we’ve hit our Q3 milestone of having a multi-attestor system working in testnet with at least 3 nodes
Finance and Fundraising
We’ve raised $1.65Mn to date.
We were seeded by grants from Chainlink and Stacks, and had previously raised from 6 VC funds, a Sequoia Scout and a Bitcoin whale, as well as our new investors ABCDE Capital, Comma 3 Ventures and Bixin
We are now in discussions with five funds to fill out the remaining $350k that will lead to an oversubscribed $1Mn round
We have been admitted to the renowned 2023/24 CDL-Montreal Blockchain/Web3 cohort at Creative Destruction Lab (CDL), a Canadian accelerator closely affiliated with universities and industry experts.
I’m a former graduate of CDL as I had participated with my last startup, MarketMuse
How You Can Help
I always appreciate referrals to DeFi and CeFi teams that are looking to utilize or expand into Bitcoin lending (as well as ordinals, BRC-20s or other satoshi-based assets).
Best,
Aki
PS – Missed any of our previous Investor Updates? Read past editions here: https://bit.ly/dlc-link-investor-updates
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