June 17, 2024
Wasabi, a protocol for trading memecoins and NFTs with leverage, has successfully garnered $3 million in a seed funding round spearheaded by Electric Capital. The investment round also saw participation from other investors such as Alliance, Memeland, Spencer Ventures, Luca Netz who is the CEO of Pudgy Penguins, Zhouxun Yin who is a co-founder at Magic Eden, Santiago Santos who is an angel investor, and Crypto Twitter figures like Cygaar, Zagabond, DCF God, and Bob Loukas, as reported by Wasabi on Monday.
Project | Latest Raise | Latest Raise Date | Stage | Total Raise | Lead Investor | Category |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Wasabi | $3M | June 17, 2024 | Seed | $3M | Electric Capital | Memecoin |
Eren Derman, a co-founder at Wasabi, revealed to The Block that the fundraising for the seed round commenced in early January and concluded by the end of February. However, he chose not to disclose any details regarding the round's structure and valuation.
With the newly secured funding, Wasabi intends to increase its existing team from six members to ten in the upcoming period, as stated by Derman. He further mentioned that the project is in the process of recruiting a smart contract engineer, a back-end developer, a quantitative engineer, and a head of operations.
About Wasabi
Wasabi is a protocol in the realm of decentralized finance (DeFi) that enables users to trade "long tail assets" such as memecoins and NFTs with leverage, according to Derman. He pointed out the absence of a robust financial infrastructure for these long-tail assets, leading to the inception of Wasabi to facilitate efficient price discovery for such assets.
Wasabi provides its users with the ability to go long, short, and stake memecoins and NFTs. Derman explained that more exotic assets with lower liquidity offer leverage ranging from 2-3x, while flagship assets like ETH and USDB can be leveraged up to 10x.
Wasabi positions itself as the pioneer protocol to facilitate leveraged trading underpinned by actual assets. Derman elaborated that Wasabi provides on-chain perpetual futures, implying that all trades are backed by assets, thereby eliminating counterparty risk. He emphasized that this is a significant departure from traditional perpetual decentralized exchanges like Aevo and Hyperliquid, which depend on market makers to maintain their synthetic price feeds in alignment with the actual on-chain asset prices.
Website: https://www.wasabi.xyz/
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About Investor
Investor: Electric Capital
Electric Capital is a venture capital firm that focuses on accelerating disruptive innovations in the crypto and Web3 sectors. The team at Electric Capital has collectively started eight companies, shipped products for billions of users, run billion-dollar business units, invested in over 100 technology startups with a cumulative market cap of over $50B, and traded billions in derivatives.
The firm invests in both liquid and illiquid tokens that are emerging stores of value and rooted in novel technology. They have a deep understanding of community governance, token economics, cryptography, and distributed systems. Electric Capital invests in cryptocurrencies, blockchain-based businesses, fintech companies, and marketplaces.
Their portfolio includes investments in the next generation of iconic founders in crypto and Web3. They have also released a developer report, providing insights and updates on the crypto ecosystem. Electric Capital is led by a team of technology entrepreneurs, engineers, and successful investors.
Location: Upper Marlboro, MD
Website: https://www.electriccapital.com/
A central focus of investor activity in the cryptocurrency space is the evaluation of new crypto projects to invest in, particularly those with huge potential. This blog provides insight into what new ventures are benefiting from venture capital support (VC funding in crypto). These new crypto projects, funded by professional investors, can dictate the next narrative in crypto and the next big crypto movers.
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