LI.FI financing $29 million! Crypto industry Google Map monthly trading volume hits $8 billion

Crypto startup LI.FI completes $29 million funding led by Multicoin Capital and CoinFund, bringing its total funding to $52 million. LI.FI co-founder and CEO Philipp Zentner states that the project is a combination of Google Flights and Google Maps, providing competitive price comparison and route planning services for crypto financial companies.

Bridging Pain Points: The First Gate for Enterprises Entering Cryptocurrency

When companies decide to venture into the crypto space, they quickly discover that the crypto market is dispersed across many blockchains. If they want to transfer assets between different blockchains, they usually rely on a technology called “bridging,” which can be insecure and costly. LI.FI co-founder and CEO Philipp Zentner founded the company precisely to solve these issues.

Cross-chain bridging is one of the most challenging technical hurdles in the blockchain ecosystem. Different blockchains use different consensus mechanisms, virtual machines, and security models, making asset transfers extremely complex. Currently, there are dozens of bridging solutions on the market, each with different security, speed, and cost characteristics. For companies lacking technical expertise, choosing the right bridging solution is nearly impossible.

Even more concerning, bridging technology has been a major target for hackers. In 2022, the Ronin Bridge was hacked for $624 million, and Wormhole for $326 million. These tragic cases have caused companies to doubt bridging technology. Additionally, the fees for different bridging solutions vary widely, from 0.1% to 5%. Choosing the wrong one could result in significant cost waste. LI.FI’s value proposition is to address these pain points: through price comparison and route optimization, helping companies find the safest, cheapest, and fastest cross-chain solutions.

800 Enterprises Endorse: Network Effect through CEX Partnerships

LI.FI’s partners include fintech companies, broker applications, trading platforms, electronic wallets, and new banking models. The startup has over 800 partners, including CEXs like Robinhood. This partner network is LI.FI’s strongest moat, as it creates a bilateral network effect: more companies using LI.FI means higher trading volume, which attracts more liquidity providers, leading to better liquidity, and in turn attracting more enterprises.

Robinhood’s participation is especially important. As one of the largest retail brokerages in the US, Robinhood has tens of millions of users. If these users conduct cross-chain transactions via Robinhood, with the underlying technology provided by LI.FI, it will generate substantial trading volume and brand endorsement for LI.FI.

The company states that its value proposition lies in helping enterprises enter the market faster and saving them time on research, integration, and maintenance. This “Infrastructure-as-a-Service” business model is becoming increasingly popular in the Web3 space. Enterprises do not need to research various bridging protocols, integrate multiple APIs, or maintain complex tech stacks; they can simply connect to LI.FI’s unified API to access cross-chain capabilities. This significantly lowers the technical barriers and time costs for enterprises entering crypto.

How LI.FI Creates Value for Enterprises

Price Comparison Engine: Real-time comparison of rates and fees across dozens of bridging solutions to ensure the best prices

Smart Route Planning: Automatically selects the optimal cross-chain route based on amount, speed requirements, and security preferences

Unified API Interface: Enterprises only need to integrate once to access all bridging solutions, avoiding individual integrations

Continuous Monitoring and Maintenance: LI.FI team monitors the security and performance of all bridging protocols, so enterprises don’t need to worry about technical risks

$8 Billion Monthly Trading Volume: Profitability and Expansion Plans

Zentner states that LI.FI has achieved profitability and earns revenue through transaction fees, but he declined to disclose specific figures. As of October, the company’s monthly trading volume reached $80 billion, about seven times higher than the same period last year. This explosive growth indicates a rapidly expanding market demand for cross-chain infrastructure. An $80 billion monthly volume implies an annualized trading volume close to $1 trillion. Even at a fee rate of 0.1%, annual revenue would reach $1 billion.

The company has over 100 employees, demonstrating that LI.FI has grown from a startup to a mid-sized tech firm. Spencer Applebaum, partner at Multicoin Capital, comments: “As crypto trading becomes a core feature of mainstream fintech applications, the biggest challenge is how to enable seamless collaboration among fragmented blockchains, liquidity, and execution mechanisms. The LI.FI protocol provides fintech companies and Web3 wallets with a unified API for trading and cross-chain asset transfers, handling complex chain processing in the background.”

With this new funding, LI.FI plans to expand into different trading domains, including perpetual futures, yield opportunities, prediction markets, and lending markets. Zentner also plans to recruit more staff using this capital. This expansion strategy indicates LI.FI’s ambition to not only be a cross-chain bridge provider but to become a comprehensive crypto financial infrastructure provider.

Perpetual futures are the largest trading product in the crypto market, with daily trading volumes reaching hundreds of billions of dollars. If LI.FI can provide enterprises with cross-exchange perpetual futures price comparison and execution services, it will open a huge market space. Yield Opportunities refer to various profit strategies in DeFi, such as liquidity mining and staking; LI.FI can help users find the highest-yield, risk-controlled opportunities. Prediction markets and lending markets also hold significant potential.

This diversification requires substantial technical investment and market education. However, LI.FI’s existing network of over 800 enterprise partners and $80 billion in monthly trading volume provides a solid foundation for this expansion. Most importantly, LI.FI has already achieved profitability, indicating its business model has been validated. It is not just sustaining operations through investor funding, but has real revenue supporting its growth.