San Francisco – Everclear, a cross-chain clearing and settlement protocol, has secured a $5 million investment from Pantera Capital, aiming to revolutionize how assets move across different blockchain networks. The funding comes as the company, formerly known as Connext, highlights persistent challenges within the Ethereum ecosystem, asserting that its cross-chain capabilities are "stuck in 2019."
In a recent social media post, Everclear stated, "ETH is everywhere - powering DeFi, L2s, staking, and more. But it moves like it’s stuck in 2019. Wrapped, bridged, delayed. Meanwhile, other assets have evolved. ETH still has no native rails. It's time that changed." This sentiment underscores a critical pain point in decentralized finance: the fragmentation of liquidity and the cumbersome nature of current cross-chain solutions.
Everclear, which rebranded from Connext on June 3, 2024, positions itself as a foundational "clearing layer" for intent-based bridges. Led by co-founders Arjun Bhuptani and Layne Haber, the protocol aims to streamline the transfer of data and assets between disparate blockchain ecosystems, reducing the reliance on complex and often slow "wrapped" assets. The company's technology is designed to enable more efficient netting and settlement of capital flows across chains, thereby lowering costs and improving capital utilization for market participants.
The current landscape of Ethereum's cross-chain interactions often involves slow transactions, high costs, and reliance on third-party bridges that can introduce security risks and external trust assumptions. These issues lead to isolated liquidity, hindering the seamless flow of value necessary for a truly interconnected Web3 environment. Everclear's approach seeks to establish "native rails" by automating processes and providing a universal platform for solvers to net off settlements, moving towards a more unified and efficient multi-chain future.
With its mainnet expected to launch in Q3 2024, Everclear is built on an Arbitrum Orbit-based rollup chain and has already demonstrated significant utility, delivering over $1 billion in Total Value Locked (TVL) to Renzo Protocol through Layer-2 restaking. Backed by prominent investors including NEAR Foundation, Polychain, and the Ethereum Foundation, Everclear is poised to address the critical need for more fluid and secure cross-chain interoperability, fostering a new era of chain abstraction.