Nfts
Wasabi Secures $3 Million to Enable Leveraged Trading for Memecoins and NFTs
Quick take:
- Wasabi is a DeFi protocol on Ethereum and Blast that allows users to trade long-tail assets like memecoins and NFTs with leverage.
- The platform has over 18,000 traders who have generated over $500 million in volume this year.
- The company plans to use the new capital to expand its team from six to ten people.
Wasabi, a DeFi protocol on Ethereum and Blast, announced a $3 million funding round led by Electric Capital.
The round also attracted participation from Alliance, Memeland and Spencer Ventures, with Pudgy Penguins CEO Luca Netz, Magic Eden co-founder Zhouxun Yin, angel investor Santiago Santos, Cygaar, Zagabond, DCF God and Bob Loukas as angel investors.
The company claims to have more than 18,000 traders who have already generated more than $500 million in trading volume this year.
Eren Derman, co-founder of Wasabi told The Block that the protocol will use the funds to expand its team from six to 10 people, including hiring a smart contracts engineer, a back-end developer, a quantitative engineer, and a head of operations.
Commenting on the reasoning behind the product, Derman said it is the first protocol to enable leveraged trading backed by real assets. Wasabi’s on-chain perpetual futures contracts mean all transactions are asset-backed, eliminating counterparty risk, he said.
“[It] is very different from conventional decentralized exchanges like Aevo and Hyperliquid, which rely on market makers to keep their synthetic prices tied to the real price of on-chain assets.
Users can trade long and short positions, or stake memecoins and NFTwith 2-3x leverage available for more exotic assets, while more established assets like ETH and USDB have up to 10x leverage,” Derman said.
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