Ethereum Push Notification Service (EPNS) has raised $10.1 million (approximately Rs 76 crore) in a token round, with an average valuation of $131 million.

EPNS’s native virtual asset token Push had a fully diluted market capitalisation of $128 million as of writing this article, according to CoinMarketCap.

The EPNS team will utilise the funding to develop the notification protocol beyond the Ethereum ecosystem, starting with the Polygon network, strengthening products, and expanding its team to 60 from 30. It aims to grow to a million users.

Jump Crypto led the funding round where the participants included Tiger Global, ParaFi, Sino Global Capital, Polygon Studios, Woodstock Ventures, DCX Ventures, and Alpha Wave Capital.

Founded by Richa Joshi and Harsh Rajat in 2020, EPNS is building a web3 communication protocol. The protocol enables any smart contracts, decentralised applications (dApps), or traditional servers to send notifications tied to the wallet addresses of a user.

Notifications can be integrated and shown on any crypto wallet, mobile app, extension, or dApp. Beginning with the model of sending and receiving push notifications on Ethereum, EPNS has now launched a mainnet – a fully developed blockchain network – as a multi-chain protocol, enabling any type of automated communication on decentralised network.

“Raising the round was very strategic for us. We knew it was the right time when we decided to become a multichain protocol,” Rajat told ET. “Because we are inventors of the idea, raising has been relatively easier for us.”

The Series A round comes with 9-12 months lock-in period for the investors, and they will be vested over the following 24-30 months.

EPNS, which was a nominee for ET Startup Awards in 2021 in the top innovator category, has so far raised $11.42 million in funding, including this round.

Sandeep Nailwal, cofounder at Polygon, said the two firms’ association goes back to when EPNS started. “EPNS has an early mover advantage, offering its multichain services with free-transaction costs,” he said in a statement. “EPNS has been building something unique, an essential tool to power the Web3 communications layer. Such a layer has been missing until now.”