Borderless Capital co-leads $3 million seed round for cross-chain auction protocol Mayan

Mayan, a startup building a cross-chain auction protocol, raised $3 million in seed funding. 

Venture firms 6th Man Ventures (6MV) and Borderless Capital co-led the round. Additional participation came from Solana Ventures , Hash3, Big Brain Holdings, Arrington Capital, Wormhole Cross-Chain Ecosystem Fund, Solana co-founder Anatoly Yakovenko and Wormhole Labs co-founder Saeed Badreg.

The seed round comprises Mayan 's total funding raised.

"We're thankful to the early adopters of Mayan, thanks to whom we have achieved already over $470 million in transferred value across ecosystems," Mayan co-founder Mo Elahi told The Block. "We'd like to reward our most loyal users moving forward." 

The firm intends to launch a points system to track user engagement on Mayan, Elahi added. 

Cross-chain auctions

Built on Solana, Mayan finds the best rate for users enacting transactions from any blockchain. The protocol turns input tokens into the USD-pegged stablecoin USDC and then sends them to their final destinations using Circle's Cross-Chain Transfer Protocol ( CCTP ). This on-chain system facilitates inter-blockchain transfers by burning USDC on the source chain, minting it again on the destination chain and communicating both processes between Circle and the source chain. Mayan also sends pertinent data for auctions using a message-passing platform from Wormhole.

According to the firm's website, Mayan’s total volume reached around $486 million USD among 337,185 swaps, with active wallets hitting nearly 150,000. In the future, Mayan intends to bolster the cross-chain user experience, implement completely permissionless and transparent auctions, launch on more blockchains and add support for NFTs.

"Ultimately, I envision Mayan evolving into a fully permissionless venue for trading any kind of crypto assets, whether Fungible Tokens or NFTs. We’re excited to drive innovation in the intent-centric multichain future, enhancing blockchain interactions for all web3 users," Elahi said in a statement.