The Axelar Network announced the completion of a $35-million Series B funding round this week, elevating its total market valuation to over $1 billion and establishing its status as a unicorn corporation.

Major participants of the round include Dragonfly Capital, Polychain Capital and North Island Ventures, among others. The network has implemented partnership integrations with a suite of validators, as well as leading blockchain platforms such as Ethereum, Avalanche, Polygon and Polkadot.

Cointelegraph spoke exclusively to Axelar CEO and co-founder Sergey Gorbunov for an exclusive insight into the specific strategies for capital deployment across the business in preparation for its upcoming mainnet release.

He noted that the “primary focus is to provide universal interoperability with minimal risk” and that “the funds will be used to continue building the core network functionalities and scaling integrations with more blockchains and applications.”

New quantitative data released by blockchain intelligence firm IntoTheBlock this week revealed stark insights into the growth of network activity on Ethereum, with 18.36 million new addresses being created in 2021, equivalent to 1.53 million per month.

#Ethereum users growth in a nutshellA good way to track the adoption is by following the number of addresses with a balance- There are 70.4m addresses holding $ETH- Just in 2021, it increased 18.36m. That means the network was growing at a pace of 1.53m addresses per month pic.twitter.com/xnhDw3wHVm

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