As stablecoins like Tether and Circle’s USDC grow in popularity, more companies are rushing to offer versions of their own. That includes Ripple, Revolut and Robinhood, which are reportedly planning to offer their own version of the digital tokens, which are designed to hold a constant peg to a fiat currency like the U.S. dollar.
But as the crypto landscape gives rise to a growing number of blockchains and DeFi applications, stablecoin issuers can struggle to distribute their product across a fragmented landscape. One startup seeking to solve this problem is Noble, an asset issuance platform that has just raised a $15 million in Series A funding round led by Paradigm.
“We’re seeing a trend in the blockchain space more broadly, where a lot of builders or companies are actually wanting to build their own appchain,” Jelena Djuric, co-founder and CEO of Noble, said.
An “appchain” is an application-specific blockchain that is designed to meet the requirements of a company’s particular needs. New appchains, like some layer 2s built on Ethereum, are launching every day, making it harder for stablecoin issuers to natively launch their tokens in every place.
Djuric said that she saw this problem as an opportunity to bridge the gap between stablecoin issuers like Circle and appchain builders by developing a platform that provides increased liquidity.
“We’re not a monolithic base layer like Solana, Ethereum or even Arbitrum,” Djuric said.
“We’re actually a chain with a validator set that is plugged into 45 or so distinct appchains, where we issue in under a second of block times.”
Noble serves as an intermediary, working with stablecoin issuers to efficiently distribute their product across 50 different blockchains and providing developers with a seamless user interface to ensure that their appchains are compatible with Noble.
Noble has already partnered with various stablecoin issuers including Circle, Ondo Finance, Hashnote Labs and Monerium. The company has already attracted over $458 million of assets.
They will use the money from this round to accelerate stablecoin adoption by developing new user-facing products and expanding their payroll. In total, Noble has raised $18.3 million in funding.