Oasis Foundation Launches $160M Ecosystem Fund

Oasis Network, a privacy-focused blockchain that uses confidential smart contracts, is getting a $160 million fund to incentivize the dApp development. 

Oasis Foundation Announces $160M Fund 

Oasis Foundation, the organization behind the Cosmos-based privacy-enabled blockchain Oasis Network, is launching a $160 million ecosystem fund.

According to a Wednesday press release, the fund will finance various Oasis-native decentralized applications covering DeFi, NFTs, DAOs, gaming, and the Metaverse.

Oasis is a Proof-of-Stake blockchain designed using the Cosmos SDK. Its main focus is to build a privacy-preserving dApp ecosystem. Its architecture comprises two main components: the Consensus Layer and the ParaTime Layer.

The Consensus Layer is a Proof-of-Stake system that relies on a set of validator nodes. Meanwhile, the ParaTime Layer consists of several parallel runtimes composed of different computing environments. Oasis’ ParaTime architecture allows for running different computing layers that share the entire network’s security while preserving confidentiality.

Oasis Foundation has created the fund in partnership with several leading crypto investors, including AME Cloud Ventures, Dragonfly Capital Partners, Draper Dragon Fund, Electric Capital, FBG, Jump Capital, Kenetic Capital, and NGC Ventures, and Pantera Capital.

Notably, the fund launch lands as the vesting lock of more than 1 billion native ROSE tokens is due to end. In 2018, Oasis raised over $45 million from multiple big name backers, including Andreessen Horowitz, Polychain Capital, Accel, Binance Labs, and those that supported the new fund.

Commenting on the launch, Oasis Foundation Director Jernej Kos said that the team was “thrilled to work with longtime supporters of Oasis” before adding that the network was “now fully developer ready.” He added:

“We invite all developers to consider Oasis as we are ready to support them with funding, technical expertise and mentoring, and a strong network of backers.”

Oasis has made significant strides to become a prominent player in the crypto privacy space in recent months. In October, the team launched Cipher ParaTime, a platform to create privacy-focused DeFi leveraging confidential computing. Cipher ParaTime dApps offer a way to use DeFi without a trail of activity appearing on a public ledger. Other similar projects operating in the privacy niche include Secret Network, another Cosmos-based blockchain that supports a range of DeFi applications and NFT projects.

For Oasis, separating consensus from computing helps the network achieve instant block finality, high throughput, and low gas fees. The team is hoping that its high-speed, low cost capabilities will help the network scale for mass adoption, but it’s not the only Layer 1 network aiming to attract users. Several networks have attracted new users this year amid ongoing scaling issues and surging gas fees on Ethereum. While the second-ranked blockchain is still the most used network for DeFi and NFTs, other Layer 1 platforms like Solana, Fantom, Avalanche, and Cosmos have seen rapid growth this year.

Disclosure: At the time of writing, the author of this piece owned ETH, SOL, and other cryptocurrencies.  

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