Linera is ceasing operations immediately after its planned LNRA community token sale on Sonar failed to reach the 1.5 million USDC minimum, raising only 848,271 USDC from 617 participants, or 56.6% of the required threshold. All committed funds were refunded and no LNRA tokens were distributed.
Founder Mathieu Baudet announced the decision in the project’s official Discord on September 18. The team had sought emergency financing after the sale, but those discussions did not produce enough capital to continue development toward mainnet. As a result, Linera will gradually close its applications and Discord community, while existing user points will remain recorded but carry no guaranteed future token, financial benefits, or other rights.
Linera had previously raised $12 million across two disclosed rounds. a16z Crypto led a $6 million seed round in June 2022, and Borderless Capital led another $6 million round in August 2023. Other investors included Laser Digital Ventures, DFG, Matrixport Ventures, Flow Traders, GSR Markets, Tribe Capital, and Cygni Capital. Despite this backing and years of development, the project never reached a production mainnet.
Linera’s technical design was based on microchains that could process workloads in parallel, with roots in founder Mathieu Baudet’s prior work at Meta on the Novi wallet and Libra/Diem project. The shutdown halts the planned mainnet test for that architecture, leaving the project without a confirmed funding plan or timetable for a potential future relaunch.
