Orca Secures $18 Million From Series A Fundraiser, And Backing From Polychain, Placeholder, Three Arrows

Table of Contents

• The Team At Orca 
• The Orca AMM And Governance Token
• Community Initiatives 
• The Future 

Orca has announced that it has secured initial funding from a number of investors. The protocol has welcomed Polychain, Three Arrows, and Placeholder as co-leads while also announcing a number of investors who will help make Orca the go-to swap on the Solana ecosystem. 

Orca announced that it has also secured investments from Sino Global Capital, Jump Capital, Zee Prime, DeFiance, collab & Currency, Coinbase Ventures, and Solana Capital. Partner at Placeholder Chris Burniske commented on the developments stating, 

“Not only is Orca responsive and affordable, but it is finance made fun, with a cheery experience, community, and broader values-based mission. It’s teams like Orca that will bring crypto to the mainstream and redefine how we think of finance in our everyday lives.”

The Team At Orca 

Orca was founded by Yutaro Mori and Grace “Ori” Kwan. Yutaro Mori has significant experience in crypto after spending years working on Ethereum 2.0 and also overseeing the implementation of smart contracts at UMA. Grace Ori Kwan has several years of experience as an engineer and designer at IDEO, Coursera, and Stanford. 

Orca was launched in February and had a team of only two individuals and no external funding. Since its founding, Orca’s core team has increased to 8 individuals, drawing experience from a number of companies such as Google, Amazon, McKinsey, and several others. 

The Orca AMM And Governance Token

The Orca AMM focuses on providing minimal fees, lightning-fast innovation, and UX innovations such as Fair Price, Indicator, and Magic Bar. The Orca AMM is among the first applications on the Solana ecosystem. 

Orca is also one of the first protocols to launch their governance token on Solana, giving the community early access to the ORCA token. Currently, Orca has reached 18,000 unique monthly wallets, $735 million in lifetime trade volume, and $250 million in total value locked. 

Community Initiatives 

Orca has also donated around $120,000 towards fighting climate change. It has done so through its Impact Fund. The protocol has also produced a podcast called OrcaPod and has also distributed 14,000 collectibles. Orca is also one of the first projects to explore NFTs and DeFi. Orca collectible holders will also have exclusive access to upcoming NFT projects and also the opportunity to stake their collectibles. 

The Future 

Orca is creating a next-generation AMM that will pair capital efficiency with a simple, human-focused UX. Orca will also enable community pools and focus on improving the protocol’s SDK, which will make it simpler for projects to build on Orca smart contracts. Orca will be focusing on three major initiatives. 

• Feature development - Orca will focus on feature development on the smart contract and UI layers.
• Awareness - Orca will raise awareness by employing social media campaigns. It will also focus on NFT art projects and global expansion to raise awareness. 
• Partnerships - Orca will focus on creating partnerships with aggregators, lending platforms, NFT projects, etc. 

Thanks to the funding round, Orca can invest significantly in the initiatives mentioned above and will also turn its attention towards building a robust governance system with complete decentralization as the ultimate goal.

Disclaimer: This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.