Pantera Leads Arch's $13M Series A to Build Bitcoin's Financial Rails

Today, Arch is excited to share that we have closed a $13 million Series A funding round, led by Pantera Capital, with participation from other strategic investors.

At Arch, we believe Bitcoin was always meant to be more than just digital gold.

It deserves financial infrastructure that matches its global scale — without compromising its security or forcing users to bridge assets elsewhere.

That’s why we're building the permissionless financial rails for a Bitcoin-denominated world.

"By introducing smart contract functionality directly into Bitcoin's Layer 1, Arch creates a pivotal execution platform enhancing Bitcoin's existing framework instead of splitting its liquidity and potential,"
said Franklin Bi, General Partner at Pantera.

Why Now

Bitcoin has more than $2 trillion in asset value, yet today, its role is mostly limited to holding or spending.

If you want to do anything more complex — lending, stablecoins, trading — you’re pushed toward centralized exchanges or trusting insecure bridges to move assets over to Layer-2 networks with their own security and liquidity concerns.

Each of those steps introduces friction, trust assumptions, and risk.

Arch changes that.

We’re making Bitcoin programmable at its base layer — without bridges, without custody, and without compromising Bitcoin’s foundational principles.

With Arch, developers can build DeFi protocols, mint and trade NFTs, launch DAOs, and create smart contracts, all directly tied to Bitcoin’s native liquidity and security.

“The potential of Bitcoin has always been immense, but its programmability has remained limited by design,” said Matt Mudano, CEO of Arch Labs. “With Arch, we’re introducing a solution that respects Bitcoin’s foundational principles while significantly expanding its capabilities. Our focus on liquidity, user experience, and security makes Arch uniquely positioned to unlock Bitcoin’s full potential as a programmable financial system.”

What We’re Launching

Arch introduces the programmability layer that Bitcoin was missing, bringing fast, secure, and fully verifiable smart contract-like functionality to the world's most valuable blockchain.

Our novel execution environment is powered by a few key innovations:

• ArchVM: A specialized virtual machine that processes complex off-chain computation and enables high-throughput, Turing-complete smart contracts.
• Decentralized Validator Network: A proof-of-stake network coordinating contract execution with economic security, scalability, and permissionless decentralization.
• Cryptographic Multisig: Built using the first-ever implementation of FROST + ROAST signature schemes, unlocking secure, decentralized key aggregation and multi-party computation.

Together, these unlock critical functionality that Bitcoin has never had: composable applications, programmable multisigs, cross-program invocations, decentralized lending markets, AMMs, Bitcoin-backed stablecoins, and more.

On our testnet alone, we’ve already settled more than 50 million transactions. Mainnet is on track for this summer.

What This Round Means

This funding lets us double down on engineering, security audits, developer tooling, and ecosystem growth ahead of our mainnet launch — making sure Arch is not just technically strong, but accessible and vibrant for developers and users around the world.

We’re honored to have Pantera Capital leading the way on this next phase of our journey.

We’re grateful for the belief and support from the broader Arch community, our partners, and our early investors like Multicoin Capital, Portal Ventures, OKX Ventures, Big Brain Holdings, CMS Holdings, and Tangent.

This is just the beginning.

Ready to Build?

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