Pharos raises $44M Series A

Pharos just raised $44 million to solve a boring problem that keeps big money out of crypto: moving assets between old financial plumbing and blockchain networks without breaking compliance or settlement rules. CoinDesk reported the Series A on April 8, 2026, and said the round brings Pharos’s total funding to $52 million. (coindesk.com) The investors tell you what Pharos is trying to build. Sumitomo Corporation, market maker Flow Traders, Chainlink, and SNZ backed the round, which lines up a Japanese trading house, a liquidity specialist, a blockchain middleware company, and a crypto venture investor around the same bet. (coindesk.com) That bet is not another meme coin chain. Pharos says it is building a “financial layer 1” blockchain for real-world finance, with infrastructure for real-world asset tokenization and high-frequency transactions. (coindesk.com) (pharosnetwork.xyz) A layer 1 blockchain is the base network itself, like the rails under a train, not an app riding on top. Pharos says those rails need to handle the kind of volume that payments, funds, and tokenized securities create when institutions use them every day. (docs.pharosnetwork.xyz) (pharosnetwork.xyz) The hard part is not minting a token that represents a bond or fund share. The hard part is getting cash, asset data, compliance checks, and final settlement to move together when one institution is on a private ledger and another is on a public chain. (chain.link 1) (chain.link 2) Chainlink’s presence in the round points straight at that problem. Chainlink’s Cross-Chain Interoperability Protocol is designed to move tokens and messages across chains, and its institutional material focuses on reducing counterparty and operational risk in cross-chain settlement. (docs.chain.link) (chain.link) This is already being tested outside crypto-native circles. Chainlink says Australia and New Zealand Banking Group used its system in a pilot where a customer bought tokenized assets on Ethereum using stablecoins issued on Avalanche, which is exactly the kind of cross-network handoff firms like Pharos want to make routine. (chain.link 1) (chain.link 2) Pharos has been aiming at this niche from the start. The Block reported in late 2024 that the company raised an $8 million seed round to build a layer 1 chain for fintech use cases including real-time payments and real-world assets, with SNZ already involved then as a strategic investor. (theblock.co) The company’s own documents say it is using modular architecture, parallel execution, and built-in compliance modules. In plain English, that means splitting the system into parts, processing many transactions at once, and adding rule checks that banks and regulated firms usually need before they touch new rails. (docs.pharosnetwork.xyz) (bingx.com) The timing fits a wider shift in crypto funding. Investors are still cautious on consumer speculation, but they keep showing up for projects that promise to turn blockchains into settlement infrastructure for tokenized funds, payments, and securities instead of just trading venues. (coindesk.com) (chain.link) So this round is less about launching another chain and more about building a translator between two systems that were never designed to talk to each other. If Pharos works, the user does not need to care which ledger holds the asset, which chain moves the cash, or which compliance system approved the trade. (coindesk.com) (chain.link)