Whoa, a16z led the round, raised $12 million, and Linera ended up dying over an $850k public sale Linera, once hailed as a god-tier public chain, announced today that it’s shutting down operations. The most ironic part? The final straw that broke its back was asking the market for $1.5M USDC. In the end, only 617 people participated, raising $848,271 USDC—an average of about $1,375 per person—falling short of even the minimum threshold by 57%. Linera actually had a pretty solid hand to play. Its founder, Mathieu Baudet, came from Meta/Novi. In 2022, a16z crypto led a $6M investment round, followed by another $6M led by Borderless Capital in 2023, with a16z participating again. Altogether, it raised $12M in public funding. They spent four years working on microchains, but the mainnet never launched. Later, they pivoted to Linera Markets, even spinning the narrative as the next Hyperliquid: dedicated chains, building their own products, and earning real revenue from transaction fees. But here’s the difference: Hyperliquid launched its product first, and the money followed. Linera told the story first, and then had to rely on a community round to stay alive. $1.5M should’ve been pocket change for a project backed by a16z and four years of development as an L1. Yet the market wasn’t even willing to cover the remaining $650k. After the failed public sale, the team refunded everyone in full, went out to seek emergency funding to “survive until mainnet launch,” but still found no takers. Eventually, they ran out of cash and had no choice but to shut down. In the last cycle, the most valuable assets in the primary market were elite resumes, Meta backgrounds, top-tier VCs, and a sexy new public chain architecture. In this cycle, retail investors are asking: Where’s the mainnet? Where are the users? Where’s the revenue? Why should I continue the story at a $160M FDV for the previous round’s investors? The so-called next Hyperliquid isn’t something you write into a fundraising pitch deck—it’s built transaction by transaction with real money from real users. Nowadays, you can launch a CA and raise tens of millions in ten minutes. Yet an L1 backed by a16z and four years of effort couldn’t even raise $1.5M. This is the reality of today’s market.