Nitro Labs Secures $4M For Termina: Pioneering Solana VM Network Extensions
San Francisco, United States, October 30th, 2024, Chainwire
Termina, an innovative no-code platform for extending the Solana Virtual Machine (SVM), has announced a successful $4 million seed funding round. This investment will empower developers to create customizable Solana-based networks that can be optimized for performance, privacy, and specific use cases. The fundraise was led by Lemniscap, with participation from Race Capital, No Limit Holdings, Borderless Capital, Animoca Ventures, Finality Capital, and notable angel investors from Solana Foundation, Jump Crypto, Spartan Capital, among many others.
After building several apps on Ethereum, Nitro Labs – the team behind Termina – realized that these projects could not scale due to limitations with the security and cost of the EVM. They recognized the long-term potential of the SVM, with its robust community, safety, and scalability, and started to build Termina. The team seeks to address a major gap in the Solana development ecosystem. Even before Solana’s congestion issues this spring, a number of notable projects had transitioned to rollup-like solutions to meet their applications’ needs. These migrations highlighted the serious lack of SVM infrastructure offerings within the space. Termina aims to improve the accessibility and flexibility of Solana block space by allowing developers to deploy and manage purpose-built SVM networks quickly and efficiently.
Yiwen Gao, Founder of Nitro Labs, said: “Our core belief is that network extensions can offer more than just increased transaction throughput. They’re powerful tools for experimentation, innovation, and meeting diverse needs beyond simple scaling. Solana’s emergent L2 ecosystem is already diverging from Ethereum’s, and the recent term of ‘network extensions’ aptly captures this shift along with the new use cases that’ve been unlocked.”
Shaishav Todi, Managing Partner of Lemniscap, added: “For blockchain technology to achieve mainstream adoption, it must offer unique and compelling experiences that rival those in Web2. Termina is scaling the SVM to enhance developer engagement, accelerate blockchain deployments, and drive user growth. The Nitro team has a clear vision for their platform and is poised to become a key player in the space.”
Since its initial launch, Termina has made considerable progress in the last few months. There are 20+ ecosystem partners building alongside the team, including both Solana-native and cross-chain projects. This funding round will accelerate Termina’s growth, support its open-source development efforts, and pave the way for an upcoming testnet launch this year.
About Termina
Termina is an open-source platform dedicated to deploying Solana rollups and other solutions, allowing developers to create custom-tailored SVM L2s. Termina’s mission is to facilitate broader adoption of SVM technology and onboard the next billion users to Solana. The founding team comprises industry veterans from Lyft, SpaceX, Sei Labs, RBC, and Solana Labs.
