Noble, an asset issuance chain designed to facilitate communication between blockchains, was created by NASD Inc., which has raised $3.3 million in a seed round.
Polychain Capital led the fundraising, which also included participation from Circle Ventures, Borderless Capital, and Wintermute Ventures.
Noble is a component of the inter-blockchain communication protocol (IBC), which facilitates data transfer between blockchains, and was developed for native asset issuance in Cosmos. Direct asset exchanges between users are another feature of IBC.
Karthik Raju, general partner at Polychain Capital, stated that Noble “brings a trust foundation for asset issuers looking to take advantage of the abundance of opportunity and growth in the Cosmos and IBC ecosystem.”
Circle is Noble’s first issuance partner. In September, native USDC in Cosmos was introduced, enabling chains with IBC support to utilise that stablecoin that is natively issued on Noble. Since then, more than 6 million USDC have been distributed on Noble.
Circle Ventures principal Wyatt Lonergan said, “It’s exciting to see Noble establishing a foundational role in the Cosmos ecosystem for native asset issuance, starting with the recent launch of Circle’s USDC and the upcoming deployment of Cross-Chain Transfer Protocol (CCTP)”.
Additionally, Noble is scheduled to be the first non-EVM based blockchain to be integrated with Circle’s cross-chain (CCTP), an on-chain application that enables USDC transfers between blockchains that are supported.