Cega, a decentralised finance application, has raised $5m in funding to accelerate DeFi exotic structured products.
The round was led by Dragonfly Capital with continued participation from Pantera Capital and Robot Ventures (Tarun Chitra and Robert Leshner). This brings the startup’s total seed funding raised to $9.3m.
Since its launch in June 2022, Cega has been on a mission to become a leading provider of DeFi crypto structured products.
Cega built a decentralised application that combines basic options (with advanced options characteristics to create packaged “structured” offerings for DeFi users. Its first exotic options structured product is the fixed coupon note, which is a basket of puts with knock-in barriers.
According to Cega, this exotic structured product benefits retail investors by offering superior yield, built-in downside protection, and compounded returns. It also benefits market makers by providing a discounted hedge for their portfolio as well as allowing proprietary gains through hedging trades.
Arisa Toyosaki, co-founder and CEO of Cega, said, “The team is excited to create never before seen products in DeFi that are high performing and offer users strong risk-adjusted yield. We are also excited to offer the best execution in the market through a competitive in-house liquidity maker and tap into the multi-trillion dollar exotic derivatives market.
Tom Schmidt, general partner at Dragonfly Capital Partners, added, “Cega has created an entirely new DeFi primitive through their innovation in exotic option smart contracts that was a 0-to-1 product with strong organic traction.
“The protocol has weathered the numerous blow-ups from last year without losing any funds, a testament to the team’s experience and diligence. In this same time, they’ve grown to be the #1 options protocol on Solana and one of the top derivatives protocols in the DeFi space overall. We at Dragonfly are thrilled to continue backing their vision of being the #1 DeFi derivatives protocol, and for them to bring never-before-seen products into this space.”
Earlier this year, Violet, a provider of privacy-protective compliance and identity infrastructure for DeFi, bagged $15m in a funding round.
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