Participated · Seed · Jun 2022

Astaria is a NYC-based NFT lending platform that enables users to obtain instant liquidity for their NFTs through a webapp. Users can log on and receive customized liquidity terms for specific NFTs without forced liquidations. The platform is led by CEO Justin Bram and CTO Joseph Delong. Astaria closed an $8 million seed funding round, bringing outside capital to the business. Backers span venture firms, trading firms, DAOs and numerous individual crypto investors.

Participated · Series A · Dec 2021

Paradigm operates a zero-fee institutional liquidity network that connects institutional counterparties to source large and complex derivatives liquidity across centralized and decentralized venues. The platform provides workflow automation to execute multi-leg and multi-product strategies as single atomic transactions, reducing leg risk and execution costs. Paradigm is non-custodial, lets traders choose settlement venues, and offers products such as complex order books for spreads and combinations, spread matrices for futures, and loans rate curves. The company works with over 600 institutions and reports trading volumes have risen roughly 1,300% year-over-year to about $10 billion in total volume traded per month. In 2021 Paradigm increased headcount threefold and captured roughly 30% of global listed options volume. Management says it is focused on establishing a robust network before monetizing and plans to use new funding to build out its network of institutional traders, CeFi exchanges, and DeFi protocols, enhance 24/7 customer support, and expand product offerings. Paradigm is developing a decentralized order-book protocol that aims to unite liquidity from every crypto exchange into one giant pool. The product is being built as a lightweight, sidechain-like protocol independent of Ethereum to address speed and performance limitations of existing decentralized exchanges. Co-founders Liam Kovatch and Henry Harder, both on leave from Columbia, expect to show a beta by the end of the year. Financially, the Paradigm Foundation raised a $1 million equity seed led by Polychain Capital with participation from Dragonfly Capital Partners and Chapter One. The founders say the small round was oversubscribed and was intentionally capped at $1 million to remain capital efficient, citing 0x’s earlier seed as a reference. The protocol will allow exchanges and individuals to advertise liquidity on the same book, with the team predicting trading fees will decline as the network grows.

Participated · Initial Coin Offering · Dec 2021

Zeta Markets is a DeFi derivatives trading platform that leverages Solana's censorship-resistant infrastructure. The platform provides price updates, liquidation mechanisms, rapid on-chain settlement, and ultra-low fees for derivatives traders. It is designed to promote liquidity and enable non-custodial, low-collateral derivatives trading. Zeta emphasizes fast settlement and on-chain clearing to reduce friction for traders. The company recently attracted outside capital, indicating investor interest in its product and growth trajectory. Zeta Markets is a decentralized platform built on Solana that facilitates liquid, non-custodial, and natively under-collateralized derivatives trading. It allows traders to post a fraction of the full price of futures and options while supporting cross-margining so traders can account for all holdings and share profit and loss across positions. The protocol leverages Solana’s censorship-resistant infrastructure to provide sub-second pricing updates, liquidations, trade execution and settlement with gas fees under $0.01. An on-chain options market maker (OMM) prices and quotes all options and futures in real time to guarantee liquidity. At launch the platform will offer options and futures for popular cryptocurrencies and include institutional-grade features such as an orderbook and matching engine powered by Serum, instant settlement, portfolio cross-margin, and sub-second mark-to-market updates. The company plans to accelerate development, grow the business, and encourage composable project integrations.

Participated · Seed · Nov 2021

Syndica is a Houston, TX–based Web 3.0 blockchain infrastructure company focused on the Solana ecosystem. It provides cloud-like infrastructure, developer tooling, and APIs to Solana developers. The company supplies an RPC node layer that sits between the blockchain and decentralized applications, allowing DApps to read and write data to the chain. Syndica emphasizes RPC node scalability and offers a suite of features including advanced logging, audience insights, and RPC usage analytics to help developers build products. Led by CEO Ahmad Abbasi and co-founder Danial Abbasi, the company plans to use new funding to expand operations and broaden its business reach. Syndica completed an $8M Seed financing to support those efforts.

Participated · Equity · Oct 2021

PsyOptions is a Solana-native options platform founded and built by twin brothers Tommy and Taylor Johnson. The team has developed the product on Serum, an order book-based exchange on Solana. The company closed an initial fundraising round of $3.5 million to support product development and expansion. Planned product work includes novel offerings such as liquidity mining options and NFT options. The founders emphasized that the majority of investors are strategic liquidity providers who have agreed to supply liquidity and support market making. Some participating firms required help to provision infrastructure on Solana, and the PsyOptions team is sharing knowledge about their platform and Serum.