Linera Halts Operations After Failing to Secure Additional Funding Despite $12M Investment

Layer-1 blockchain project Linera has halted operations due to financial difficulties. The project raised a total of $12 million from investors including a16z Crypto and Borderless Capital but failed to secure the necessary additional funds for its mainnet launch.

On October 18 (local time), founder Mathieu Bode announced on the official Discord that 'the project operations will be immediately suspended, with no plans to resume in the near future.'

Linera's LNRA token community sale on Sonar platform also fell short of its target. The project secured approximately $848,300 in USDC investment commitments but did not reach the minimum threshold of $1.5 million required for the sale to proceed. As a result, all committed funds have been refunded, with Linera having previously stated that full refunds would be issued if the minimum target was not met.

The team had sought emergency funding to continue operations until mainnet launch but failed to secure additional investments. The project emphasized that this decision is unrelated to technical capabilities, development team performance, or community support, and expressed gratitude to supporters.

Linera, founded by Bode who previously worked on Meta's digital wallet project 'Novi,' developed technology to parallelly operate multiple microblockchains for improved transaction speed and scalability. The project initially raised $6 million in a seed round led by a16z Crypto in June 2022, with subsequent investments from SigNature Capital, Kimba Ventures, and Tribe Capital. In August 2023, Borderless Capital led another $6 million funding round, bringing total investment to $12 million.