MARA raises $23 million to increase Africans participation in the crypto economy

MARA, a pan-African crypto exchange platform, announced that it has raised $23 million in seed funding to increase the participation of Africans in the crypto economy.

The investors in this round include Coinbase Ventures, Alameda Research (FTX) and Distributed Global. Other VCs in the round include TQ Ventures, DIGITAL, Nexo, Huobi Ventures, Day One Ventures and Infinite Capital and DAO Jones (investment DAO backed by Mike Shinoda, Steve Aoki and Disclosure), while about 100 other crypto investors participated too.

Founded by CEO Chi Nnadi in april 2021, MARA has Llinás Múnera, Dearg OBartuin, Kate Kallot, as part of its executive and Kojo Annan and Tatiana Koffman as board advisors

MARA aims to bring trust and normality to crypto and blockchain, demystifying technology and helping over 1 billion Africans learn and build digital wealth through blockchain with ease. The company says its suite of products will address a variety of crypto-finance needs while being regulator-compliant and authentically African-made.

Its flagship product is a consumer crypto-brokerage app that allows users to buy, send, sell and withdraw fiat and crypto assets. The company is targeting an initial launch in July this year in Kenya and Nigeria.

According to Chi Nnadi in a discussion with Techcrunch, the company plans to launch the MARA Chain, a layer-1 blockchain and Alchemy-esque platform powered by the native MARA token for developers to build decentralized applications — also known as DApps — in Africa in the last quarter of 2022. Then sometime in Q1 2023, MARA intends to launch a pro-exchange for sophisticated traders that utilize technical analysis and prefer a full set of trading options to the traditional exchange options on MARA’s retail app.

“What we’re doing is we’re creating financial infrastructure for people to build their lives. And so it’s more than just being able to buy crypto; it’s about African engineers creating their [own] projects. We want to be the source for incubating talent; we want to give them the platform through our exchange to launch their projects,” said Chi Nnadi

“We are pleased to partner with MARA as it embarks on building a digital financial system for Sub-Saharan Africa,” says Schuster Tanger, co-founder of TQ Ventures, one of the investors, in a statement. “With the right resources, this region has potential for mass adoption of cryptocurrency. To that end, the local knowledge and specialized skills of the MARA team is quite promising.”