Zeta Markets, a DeFi futures and options exchange built on Solana, secures $8.5 million in strategic funding from leading crypto investors.
The latest funding round for Zeta was led by Jump Capital with participation from Race Capital, Electric Capital, DACM, Airtree Ventures, Amber Group, Wintermute, Sino Global Capital, Genesis Block Ventures, QCP Capital, Alameda Research, Solana Capital, MGNR, 3kVC, Orthogonal Trading, LedgerPrime, and SkyVision Capital.
Zeta (ζ) is an under-collateralized DeFi derivatives exchange, providing liquid derivatives trading to individuals and institutions.
Zeta leverages Solana’s censorship-resistant infrastructure to offer users with pricing updates, liquidations, the ability to execute trades and settle positions sub-second while paying less than $0.01 in gas fees.
Solana blockchain is a potential rival to Ethereum. Ethereum currently handles about 15 transactions per second (TPS), while Solana is capable of more than 1,000 TPS, according to data from blockchair and Solana Beach.
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Commenting on the funding, Anatoly Yakovenko, President of the Solana Foundation, said:
Building a Nasdaq natively on the blockchain is something I always wanted to see happen on Solana. Zeta, winners of the Solana hackathon, are making this a reality for both options & futures and pushing the limits of what’s possible on-chain
The strategic funding round was conducted via private token sale. This raise comes off the back of Zeta Market’s grand prize win in the Solana Summer hackathon which featured over 13,000 participants worldwide.
Tristan Frizza, Core Contributor to Zeta Markets, said:
“We’ve seen a Cambrian explosion in the Solana DeFi ecosystem since just the beginning of this year, with TVL accelerating over 100x to almost $15bn. The unparalleled performance of the underlying chain massively opens up the design space for innovative protocols. Zeta takes full advantage of this to bring the speed and deep liquidity of CeFi derivatives to DeFi, whilst remaining permissionless and fully composable.”
The company said it will offer a complete suite of derivatives and will launch with both options and futures for the popular cryptocurrencies. The Platform will also include a list of features traditionally found on institutional-grade centralized exchanges including, but not limited to; undercollateralized trading, portfolio cross-margin, sub-second mark-to-market updates, instant settlement, as well as an orderbook and matching engine powered by Serum.
The company will use the fund to accelerate the development and business growth of the platform, initiate community grants to encourage composable project integrations, and to onboard key strategic and market making partners.
Read Also: Eventus Systems raised $10.5 million funding through a Series A funding round in 2020