Nibiru

Nibiru Chain is a Layer 1 blockchain and smart contract ecosystem established in 2022 by co-founders Unique Divine, Arjun Sethi, Jonathan Gimeno, and Kevin Yang. The project was born from the founders' vision to address fragmentation and improve user experience within the decentralized finance (DeFi) space. CEO Unique Divine brings a background in applied machine learning and algorithmic trading, having previously led data science for the Sommelier Protocol. CTO Kevin Yang contributes experience from a three-year tenure as a software engineer at Google's Ads Infrastructure team.

The company has secured significant financial backing, raising a total of $20.5 million across three funding rounds, including a notable $12 million Series A in February 2024. This round saw participation from prominent investors like Kraken Ventures, Tribe Capital, Republic Capital, and NGC Ventures, contributing to a valuation of $100 million as of September 2022. A community sale on CoinList further validated market interest, with an initial $3 million allocation selling out in nine minutes, followed by a second $3 million extension being claimed in eleven minutes.

Nibiru operates as a proof-of-stake blockchain built with the Cosmos SDK, enabling interoperability with other blockchains through the Inter-Blockchain Communication (IBC) protocol. The platform is designed to be a developer-centric environment, offering tools like CosmWasm smart contracts, a native oracle for asset pricing, and a "dev gas" royalty mechanism that provides developers with a sustainable revenue model. For end-users, Nibiru consolidates leveraged derivatives trading, spot trading, staking, and liquidity provision into a unified experience. The core of its product suite includes Nibi-Perps (a perpetuals exchange), Nibi-Swap (a decentralized exchange), and the NUSD stablecoin.

The business model centers on the utility of its native token, NIBI, which is used for securing the network through staking, participating in governance, and paying transaction fees. By integrating key DeFi primitives directly onto its Layer 1, Nibiru aims to create a comprehensive hub for decentralized applications, targeting sectors such as real-world assets (RWAs), gaming, and advanced DeFi. The platform architecture is engineered for high performance, citing capabilities of up to 40,000 transactions per second (TPS) and 1.4-second block times. Future roadmap goals include achieving full EVM compatibility and implementing parallel optimistic execution to further enhance scalability.

Keywords: Layer 1 blockchain, smart contracts, decentralized finance, DeFi, Cosmos SDK, proof-of-stake, interoperability, perpetuals exchange, decentralized exchange, stablecoin, NIBI token, web3 hub, crypto trading, blockchain development, real-world assets, RWA, high-throughput blockchain, staking, liquidity provision, EVM compatibility