The development team at Ellipsis Labs, responsible for creating the decentralized exchange Phoenix on Solana, has successfully raised $21 million in funding from Haun Ventures to introduce Atlas, a novel blockchain designed specifically for 'verifiable finance'. Founded in 2022 by Eugene Chen and Jarry Xiao, who have a background in high-frequency trading, Ellipsis Labs aims to tackle key issues in DeFi such as inefficient price discovery and high transaction costs.
Their existing order book-style exchange, Phoenix, has already facilitated over $50 billion in trades since its launch in 2023, according to DefiLlama data. Ellipsis Labs plans to utilize the knowledge gained from building Phoenix to develop Atlas, which promises to offer ultra-low fees and high transaction throughput.
Initially, Atlas will launch as a layer-2 solution on Ethereum, designed to tap into both Ethereum and Solana's liquidity pools, featuring low-latency transaction processing, reliable oracle updates, and robust sequencing for non-custodial, on-chain price discovery. The funding round was led by Haun Ventures, a firm established in 2022 by former federal prosecutor and Coinbase executive Katie Haun, with an additional $1 million contributed by other investors, bringing the total to $21 million.