Ellipsis Labs has successfully raised $21 million from Haun Ventures and other investors to support the launch of Atlas, a layer-2 blockchain that aims to ensure verifiable finance.

The team behind this initiative operates Phoenix, a decentralized exchange on Solana. Earlier this year, Ellipsis concluded a $20 million Series A funding round led by Paradigm.

The co-founders of Ellipsis Labs, Eugene Chen and Jarry Xiao, are seasoned professionals from the high-frequency trading sector. According to a statement from Haun Ventures, they realize that "high-performance financial products can rival traditional finance without sacrificing transparency, auditability, or censorship resistance."

Ellipsis aims to tackle challenges in DeFi, such as the inefficiencies in price discovery and the high transaction costs that hinder decentralized finance from effectively competing with conventional finance systems. Since its launch in 2023, Phoenix has reportedly facilitated over $50 billion in trades.

Ellipsis seeks to integrate the insights gained from Phoenix into Atlas, which promises ultra-low fees and high transaction throughput. Initially designed as a layer-2 solution on Ethereum, Atlas aims to connect to both Ethereum and Solana’s liquidity pools. Its features will include low-latency processing, reliable oracle updates, and a robust system for non-custodial, on-chain price discovery.

Haun Ventures, founded by Katie Haun, a former federal prosecutor who has also served as an executive at Coinbase and a partner at Andreessen Horowitz, characterized this investment as a quick follow-up to the earlier funding round. The total funding for this initiative stands at $21 million.