A venture arm of major global crypto exchange Binance has led a $5.7 million funding round to launch new decentralized blockchain protocol, the FIO Protocol.

According to a press release shared with Cointelegraph on Sept. 5, Binance labs has invested in Denver-based blockchain usability firm Dapix, which is developing the Foundation of Interwallet Operability’s (FIO) Usability Protocol.

The Series A round was also participated by existing investors such as Access Venture Partners and Dundee Venture Capital, as well as new investors including Blockwall Capital, NGC Ventures and LuneX Ventures.

The funding round will allow the initial launch of the FIO Protocol, a decentralized, open-source blockchain protocol that is designed to improve usability across multiple blockchains, tokens or coins. The protocol is claimed to set alongside other blockchains as a service layer to eliminate risks and complexity in sending and receiving tokens across different blockchains.

Bitcoin.com, ShapeShift among FIO members

The Foundation of Interwallet Operability is a consortium of major crypto wallet services, exchanges and crypto payment processors supporting the FIO Protocol. To date, the consortium includes 24 members such as major crypto wallet and statistics resource Bitcoin.com, Swiss crypto exchange platform ShapeShift, Binance’s Trust Wallet, Atomic Wallet, Enjin Wallet and others.

The news comes amid the debut of the FIO Address Presale, where users of various major wallets can reserve FIO usernames: cross-chain, human-readable identifiers that eliminate the need to see blockchain public addresses.

The presale and the new funding round will enable FIO Protocol developers to deliver its mainnet launch in early 2020.