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Cross-chain defi investment platform Aperture has closed a $5.3 million funding round, after several prominent VC firms threw their support behind the company.
Led by ParaFi Capital, Arrington Capital, Costanoa Ventures and Divergence Ventures, the private seed and strategic round saw the Silicon Valley-based startup attract investment from a slew of hedge funds including Rarestone Capital, Krypital Group, PrimeBlock Ventures and Athena Ventures.
Aperture is currently preparing to record another milestone, with the private beta release of its marketplace due to launch on February 7th.
Hedge Funds Go Ape for Aperture Ecosystem
Built for both retail and institutional users, Aperture furnishes defi investors with one-click investment solutions, the kind that help them take advantage of yield-bearing opportunities on multiple networks.
By eliminating the onerous process of connecting various Web3 wallets and switching in and out of multiple chain-native assets, Aperture aims to reduce friction for traders discouraged by the complexities of the existing defi investment model. The company’s burgeoning ecosystem includes a cross-chain swap module, aggregated yield farming opportunities, an auto-yield optimiser, a marketplace for advanced strategies and community governance.
Reflecting on the funding round, ParaFi Capital’s Vice President Anjan Vinod said, “As defi continues to grow in a multi-chain environment, we expect the number of yield strategies to grow exponentially. Aperture abstracts away the complexities around cross-chain yield strategies through a single interface and strategy marketplace.”
“We believe this layer of the defi stack will be incredibly important for new users and institutions looking to use defi,” he added.
Investor Calvin Liu, meanwhile, praised Aperture’s “elite team,” saying it had shown itself to be “thoughtful, product-driven and community-oriented.” That team features a trio of co-founders whose experience includes stints at Google, Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Netflix.
A Gateway to Defi 2.0
Aperture’s forthcoming beta release includes a delta-neutral strategy on synthetic stock tokens, enabling users to deploy a long and short position on the same stock or crypto-asset to hedge against volatility in either direction.
According to Aperture, such a strategy is appealing because it generates APY on both sides of the “bet,” irrespective of price swings. Thanks to Aperture’s use of smart contracts, the execution process for enacting such a strategy will be simplified into just a few clicks.
Dubbed a gateway to defi 2.0, Aperture aims to become the industry’s go-to “cross-chain AppStore,” with numerous dApps accessible from its interface. For the aforementioned beta release, integrated defi protocols will include Anchor, Mirror and Spectrum, though the founding team plans to bring many other projects under its umbrella.
The next stage in the project’s evolution will see the release of the public V1 in March, which will allow users of EVM-compatible chains to take advantage of opportunities in the Terra blockchain ecosystem. Although defi is often associated with Ethereum, Terra is currently the second-largest defi blockchain according to Total Value Locked (TVL).
Aperture’s latest raise is part of a larger trend in blockchain funding. Last year, capital raises grew by 713%, rising from $3.1 billion in 2020 to an eye-watering $25.2 billion in 2021.