Caduceus Foundation nabs $4M to accelerate metaverse development

Caduceus, a foundation building a blockchain protocol for the metaverse, has received $4 million in a series A round of funding, as the hype around the persistent digital space continues to grow worldwide.

According to experts, the metaverse will take shape over the next decade or so with foundational technologies such as AR, VR, IoT, 5G, cloud computing and blockchain coming together and interacting with one another. The exact timeline is hard to define, but Caduceus, founded by a group of international investors and blockchain experts, is looking to accelerate work toward the last piece of this puzzle with an underlying public chain platform that comes with its own set of development tools.

Blockchain platform for the metaverse

The infrastructure-level open blockchain platform, officially dubbed Caduceus Metaverse Protocol layer 1, is purpose-built for the metaverse and the decentralized digital world. It utilizes decentralized rendering, edge computing and extended reality (XR) technology to bring developers, creators and users an industry-wide metaverse experience. 

“Caduceus is developing a suite of developer toolkits and hardware solutions that create a rich environment for metaverse development, enabling the building, financing and cross-chain portability of 3D worlds and digital assets from metaverse to metaverse — all from a decentralized, fully modular, open access blockchain with lower transaction costs, higher speeds and greater security than any other public blockchain,” Caduceus co-founder Tim Bullman said.

Currently, the protocol’s transaction cost stands at $0.0001 (minimum) and speeds range between 3,000 to 100,000 TPS (transactions per second). For reference, Flow, Solana and Ethereum cost much higher and deliver speeds between 20 to 65,000 TPS, depending on the platform in use. They also do not offer support for XR development kits or distributed cloud rendering like Caduceus.

Funding

With this round of funding, which was led by crypto investment firm Susquehanna International, Caduceus will focus on the further development of decentralized rendering and edge cloud computing as part of its metaverse protocol. 

“Caduceus is the home of the future. A place to develop everything the metaverse has to offer — in finance, in commerce, in creativity and for businesses as yet undreamed of — and this successful investment round propels us a step closer to enabling the building of that future on the Caduceus blockchain,” Bullman added.

The round values Caduceus at $80 million. However, investors are not just looking at blockchain for metaverse development. The investment in AR/VR segment has also grown, with 2021 being the second-best year in terms of fundraising for startups operating in the segment. They raised a total of $3.9 billion during the year — trailing 2018’s $4.4 billion, according to Crunchbase data.