Kana Labs

Kana Labs, founded in 2021 by Karthik Subramanian and Parthasarathy Ramanujam, operates as a blockchain infrastructure company with headquarters in London, UK, and a development team primarily based in Chennai, India. The firm positions itself as a cross-chain middleware layer, aiming to simplify the complexities of decentralized finance (DeFi) and Web3 for both developers and end-users. In October 2023, the company secured $2 million in a seed funding round from investors including MarbleX (a NetMarble subsidiary), Nexus One, Klaytn, and Gate.io, which followed an oversubscribed pre-seed round that resulted in a $21 million valuation.

The company's business model is centered around providing a sophisticated 'Web3 Middleware toolkit'. This toolkit is designed for developers at dApps, gaming (GameFi), and social finance (SocialFi) companies, enabling them to integrate multi-chain functionalities into their products. The core offering is an all-in-one Software Development Kit (SDK) that aggregates liquidity from various decentralized exchanges (DEXs) and bridges across multiple blockchain networks, including both EVM and non-EVM chains like Aptos, Solana, Polygon, and Ethereum. This allows for seamless asset swaps and transactions across different blockchain ecosystems, addressing significant industry challenges like liquidity fragmentation and high transaction costs. For end-users, Kana Labs offers a smart wallet featuring account abstraction (EIP-4337), which simplifies user onboarding with social logins and seedless wallet creation.

Kana Labs has strategically bifurcated its offerings into two main brands: 'Kana Labs' for its suite of DeFi trading products and 'Kana Labs Build' for its developer-focused infrastructure tools, such as SDKs for cross-chain bridging and liquidity aggregation. The platform supports a range of DeFi activities including swapping, staking, lending, and borrowing, all accessible through a single interface. A key feature is the ability for users to transact with any token they hold, while the recipient receives payment in their preferred currency, with the middleware handling the conversion. The company is focused on expanding its presence in the Asia-Pacific region, particularly in markets like South Korea, Japan, Hong Kong, and Taiwan.

Keywords: cross-chain middleware, DeFi aggregator, Web3 infrastructure, blockchain SDK, liquidity aggregation, smart wallet, account abstraction, multi-chain, EVM, non-EVM, GameFi solutions, decentralized finance, crypto payments, bridge aggregator, yield generation, staking platform, blockchain interoperability, dApp development tools, digital asset management, crypto wallet