Zerion raises $2M from investors including Placeholder to build 'Coinbase for DeFi'
Quick Take
- Zerion has received $2 million in seeding funding from Placeholder, Blockchain.com Ventures, and Gnosis to further develop and expand to new DeFi protocols
- The company intends to build a future of permissionless finance and hopes to take a leadership role in channeling crypto assets to DeFi
DeFi startup Zerion has secured $2 million in seed funding from Placeholder, Blockchain.com Ventures, and Gnosis.
Founded in 2018, Zerion has created a platform for non-technical crypto users to easily access and manage assets on popular decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols including MakerDao, Compound, Uniswap, Set, and Fulcrum. Users can connect as many crypto wallets as they want to the company’s platform, Zerion CEO and co-founder Evgeny Yurtaev told The Block. Non-custodial in nature, the platform mitigates centralization risks and allows users to control their own funds.
According to a company statement, DeFi has begun to cover all areas of the financial sector, from credit creation to insurance to asset management, presenting superior investment options for users.
“DeFi assets have a much better risk-return profile,” said Yurtaev. “Whereas cryptos are very volatile and hard to predict and stablecoins have extremely low risk but also low return, DeFi is building everything in between.”
Zerion hopes to build a future of permissionless finance where users do not have to rely on any platform. The company is not looking to build its own DeFi protocols, according to Yurtaev, but aims to integrate existing DiFi protocols and make them more accessible to users.
“We are Coinbase for DeFi,” said Yurtaev. “Instead of bringing fiat money to crypto, we are bringing crypto assets to DeFi.”
Brad Burnham, Venture Partner at Placeholder, said he finds Zerion’s vision appealing, comparing the emergence of DeFi to that of the Internet.
“DeFi, or decentralized finance, feels just as profoundly transformative today as the Internet did then, but it is still too hard to use,” Burham said. “Like with the Internet, it will take a young team, native to the new infrastructure, to simplify the user experience and make it more accessible. I believe Evgeny, Vadim, and Alexey are the right team and Zerion is the right product to bring DeFi to a mainstream audience.”
© 2023 The Block. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.
