A group of former Goldman Sachs traders has raised $20 million in Series A funding to build a decentralised investment bank called Ondo Finance.
The round was led by Founders Fund and Pantera Capital, with participation from Coinbase Ventures, GoldenTree, Wintermute, Steel Perlot, Tiger Global, and Flow Traders.
Ondo is building a decentralised investment bank focused on connecting stakeholders in the emerging DeFi ecosystem, including decentralised autonomous organisations (DAOs), institutions, and retail investors.The firm’s first offering was a novel primitive for decentralised structured products that offer choice between downside protection and enhanced returns.
The company quickly expanded to other use cases, such as its Liquidity-as-a-Service offering, which matches DAOs with underwriters to provide liquidity for a DAO’s native token. Ondo has partnered with more than ten DAOs and has seen more than $200 million in liquidity deposited into its protocol.
The startup now plans to launch a host of new products, including vaults that bundle yields from algorithmic stablecoins as well as vaults that aggregate yield across different blockchains.
Nathan Allman, CEO, Ondo Finance, says “We’re excited for some new product launches that will make it much easier for passive investors to obtain broad exposure to DeFi yields at a customized risk level.”
