Cata Labs announced that it has raised $4.2 million in seed funding to support its development of a cross-chain liquidity layer to accelerate the economic activity between blockchains. Spartan Group led the round, with participation from Robot Ventures, Maven11, Alchemy Ventures, HashKey Capital, Circle Ventures, Superscrypt, among others. Notable angel investors include Calvin Liu, Aditi Sriram, and David Phelps.

“The modular blockchain thesis makes it easier to create a lightweight and configurable blockchain, which leads to a proliferation of new chains. In this world, we need to build scalable infrastructure that allows for these chains to connect and transfer value between one another”

Founded by crypto veterans Jim Chang and Alexander Lindgren, Cata Labs is building Catalyst, an open-source protocol that provides liquidity between modular blockchains. With Catalyst, any new modular chain can automatically connect liquidity and swap with any chain – including liquidity hubs like Ethereum and Cosmos.

Modular blockchains – a new concept in crypto – are made up of different modules that can be added as needed. Each module performs a specific function, making the blockchain more flexible and adaptable. Modular blockchains can help increase the scalability and customisation of blockchain networks.

Modular blockchains are easier to deploy than traditional blockchains, enabling an explosion in the number of blockchains. As new chains continue to launch, they remain siloed, hindering trade between them. In fact, there’s not much to do for a modular chain if they can’t connect to another blockchain. Catalyst is changing this, offering an automatic cross-chain connection for modular chains at launch – dissolving the barriers between chains as the global liquidity layer.

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“The modular blockchain thesis makes it easier to create a lightweight and configurable blockchain, which leads to a proliferation of new chains. In this world, we need to build scalable infrastructure that allows for these chains to connect and transfer value between one another,” said Alexander Lindgren, Co-Founder of Cata Labs. “Catalyst is built from the ground-up with that intention in mind: connecting the modular future easily and automatically. It’s an evolution of the DeFi primitives that came before it.”

“With the proliferation of rollups and app-specific chains, liquidity fragmentation is becoming a significant pain point and we have yet to see a unified liquidity layer that allows users to trade native assets seamlessly and efficiently cross-chain. Catalyst presents a fresh approach to this problem space with its trust-minimised design and its “unit of liquidity” value abstraction. We believe Catalyst is in a great to position to solve this pain point, and we are very excited to be backing Jim and Alexander on their vision of bringing native swaps to and being the go-to liquidity layer for these rollups and app-specific chains,” said Kelvin Koh, managing director of the Spartan Group.

“Maven 11 has been the earliest backer of the modular blockchain design. As such we are extremely proud to be backing Jim and Alexander as they build out the first purposefully designed cross-domain application. We envision a world with 1000s of rollups and app specific chains and Catalyst is perfectly positioned to capture the increased cross-chain liquidity demand for this,” said Mads, Researcher at Maven 11.

Catalyst is the last bridge ever needed. With a combined 10+ years of full-time experience in crypto, the Cata Labs team is taking learnings from their time at established DeFi protocols and evolving them with Catalyst.

“Modular blockchains have introduced a ton of new design space for developers, empowering them with untapped levels of flexibility. This will inevitably accelerate the creation of more applications, and to support this growth, new connectivity infrastructure will be necessary for permissionless value transfer between those chains,” said Paul Almasi, Head of Alchemy Ventures. “Catalyst is purpose-built for this modular future, streamlining and abstracting the complexity of cross-chain transactions.”

Over the next few months, Cata Labs will focus on the release of the Catalyst whitepaper and testnet, bringing the power of permissionless liquidity to the Cosmos ecosystem. Shortly after, Catalyst will expand to the Ethereum ecosystem, servicing alternative L1 blockchains and L2 rollups.

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