Why can HEMI bypass the exchange 'Newbie Village'?

Written by: Nicky, Foresight News

On September 23, 2025, Binance officially announced the launch of the modular Layer 2 protocol Hemi Network (HEMI) as part of the Binance HODLer airdrop program, and spot trading opened at 20:00 that evening.

Previously, although HEMI was listed on Binance Alpha and futures market on August 29, it only launched on spot platforms such as Gate and MEXC. Market data shows that the price of the HEMI token rose from $0.0148 on August 29 to $0.12 on September 21, a growth of 710% within 30 days.

According to official project data, the total locked value of the Hemi network has exceeded 1.2 billion USD, with a secure trading volume of Bitcoin reaching 6.9 million transactions. The number of community members is 411,000, with the number of verified real users being 100,000, and there are more than 90 ecosystem protocols.

Financing history

Hemi Network has completed two rounds of major financing. In September 2024, the project secured $15 million in funding, led by Binance Labs, Breyer Capital, and Big Brain Holdings, with participation from multiple cryptocurrency industry investment firms.

In August 2025, the project completed a $15 million financing round, led by YZi Labs (formerly Binance Labs), Republic Digital, and HyperChain Capital, with other existing investors continuing to participate. The total amount raised in the two financing rounds reached $30 million.

It is worth noting that YZi Labs (formerly Binance Labs) acted as the lead investor in both rounds of financing.

Technical Architecture

Hemi Network positions itself as a modular protocol aimed at integrating the core capabilities of Bitcoin and Ethereum, viewing Bitcoin and Ethereum as components of a unified system rather than as independent ecosystems.

The core of the protocol is the Hemi Virtual Machine (hVM), which is a technical solution that embeds a full Bitcoin node into the Ethereum Virtual Machine, allowing smart contracts to directly access data on the Bitcoin chain (including UTXO, Ordinals inscriptions, etc.). This design addresses the security risks of traditional cross-chain solutions that rely on synthetic assets. Through the Hemi Bitcoin Toolkit (hBK), developers can access the Bitcoin interoperability features of hVM, fully leveraging Bitcoin's capabilities while maintaining familiarity with Ethereum development.

The consensus layer adopts the Proof-of-Proof (PoP) mechanism designed by co-founder Maxwell Sanchez: lightweight miners anchor HEMI state data to the Bitcoin chain, and transactions achieve irreversible finality after being confirmed in 9 Bitcoin blocks (approximately 90 minutes). An attacker would need to simultaneously control 51% of Bitcoin's hash power and the HEMI network to initiate a reorganization, which would cost far more than any potential gains.

Unlike traditional wrapped Bitcoin solutions, Hemi enables the secure transfer of Bitcoin assets across different chains through a tunneling system, without relying on intermediaries or wrapped tokens.

Team Composition

Hemi Network is led by three founders with extensive experience in the blockchain field. Jeff Garzik, as co-founder and Chief Engineer, was a core developer of Bitcoin and contributed five years during the early development stages of Bitcoin. He also worked at Red Hat for ten years, making significant contributions to Linux kernel development.

Co-founder Maxwell Sanchez serves as the Chief Architect and is a co-inventor of the Proof-of-Proof consensus protocol, possessing extensive experience in blockchain security. He entered the blockchain field as early as 2011 and launched a testnet utilizing post-quantum cryptography.

The third co-founder, Matthew Roszak, is a blockchain investor and entrepreneur. As the chairman of Bloq, he has made early investments in projects such as Ethereum, Coinbase, and Kraken. He is responsible for strategy and ecosystem development in the Hemi project.

The current team has about 30 members, most of whom have a technical background in Bitcoin, Ethereum, and the DeFi field, covering various professional areas such as engineering, consensus protocol innovation, and investment.

Tokenomics

The total supply of HEMI tokens is 10 billion, with the allocation plan including 25% for the team and core contributors, 15% for the Hemispheres Foundation, 32% for the community and ecosystem, and 28% for investors and strategic partners. The tokens are primarily used for staking, governance, transaction fees, and ensuring network security through the PoP consensus.

Community hot discussion

The price resilience of HEMI has sparked widespread discussion in the community. On September 22, 2025, while mainstream cryptocurrency prices generally retraced, HEMI strongly rebounded after a drop of over 20%, closing the day with a decline of only 2.12%. On the same day, HEMI's trading volume on Binance Alpha reached a historic high, with a single-day transaction amount exceeding $1.47 billion.