Ondo Raises $4M to Balance Risk and Reward for the DeFi Ecosystem

We’re excited to announce today that Ondo Finance has raised $4M in funding to accelerate the growth of DeFi by offering tailored returns to investors with a wide array of risk preferences.

The equity round was led by Pantera Capital with participation from Genesis, Digital Currency Group, CMS, CoinFund, Chapter One, Bixin, Divergence, Protoscale Capital, and The LAO, alongside angel investors such as Stani Kulechov (founder Aave), Diogo Monica (co-founder Anchorage), Josh Hannah (founder Betfair), Richard Ma (founder Quantstamp), Justin Schmidt (former Head of Digital Assets at Goldman Sachs, Head of Strategy at Talos), and Christy Choi (former Head of Investments at Binance).

What is Ondo?

Ondo is a permissionless protocol built to accelerate DeFi adoption among mainstream investors by enabling the granular exchange of risk. In an economic environment of record-low interest rates, Ondo Finance is positioned to open the door to broader DeFi adoption by allowing risk-averse investors to capture DeFi yield with mitigated and transparent risk, while simultaneously unlocking higher upside exposures for DeFi-native investors.

Risk Preferences in DeFi

Existing yield in crypto-asset markets is in the form of volatile rates derived from a complex source of inputs. This is a barrier to entry both for retail and institutional market participants who seek yield with defined risk. The often sky-high APYs are inaccessible to traditional market participants who expect more stable returns with comprehensible and customizable risk.

Ondo lets users originate risk-isolated, fixed yield loans backed by yield-generating crypto-assets. There are two types of positions in Ondo’s initial Vaults: Fixed Yield, which seeks to deliver a stable yield with mitigated downside risk, and Variable Yield, which seeks to maximize returns by using leverage. Ondo users can invest in both positions in any ratio they choose, creating their own customized return profiles. By enabling users to define their risk exposure, Ondo allows risk-averse investors to capture DeFi yield with mitigated and transparent risk while simultaneously unlocking higher upside exposures for DeFi-native investors.

For more information on how Ondo works, visit “Introducing Ondo Finance” or our full documentation. You can access the Ondo web application at https://ondo.finance/.

Our Investors

We are extremely grateful for the support of our venture and angel investors and look forward to continue work with them to bridge the worlds of decentralized and traditional financial services.

Paul Veradittakit, Partner at Pantera Capital:

“Fixed income remains the missing piece that decentralized finance needs to go mainstream. Ondo unlocks downside protection and relative certainty in forecasting returns for institutional investors looking to allocate to the attractive yields in the DeFi space. We are excited to back the Ondo team in their mission to bridge the worlds of DeFi and institutional finance.”

Matthew Ballensweig, Head of Institutional Lending at Genesis:

“Genesis is excited to support Ondo Finance as both an investor and strategic partner. We believe Ondo will help bridge capital between the institutional world and the crypto market — an evolution that we think is vital to continued growth in DeFi.”

We have just scratched the surface of opportunity in DeFi with services like lending, trading, and basic derivatives. We see a huge opportunity to bring a wider array of products from traditional finance to DeFi and create new financial primitives.

Behind Ondo

Ondo is being developed by a team of traditional banking veterans and DeFi experts. Our team includes alumni from Goldman Sachs Digital Assets and Blockchain R&D, Facebook, Microsoft, Symbiont, BadgerDAO, private equity funds, hedge funds, and various venture-backed start-ups. We’re supported by an all-star team of investors and advisors who we’ll announce soon.

Keep up with Ondo

We have a lot of exciting announcements coming up for Ondo, including the second subscription period and the raising of caps on TVL.

Join us on Discord to chat with the community.

Legal Disclaimers

This announcement has been written and published by Ondo Finance Inc. and provides no guarantee, commitment, or undertaking to utilize any of its assets, funds, properties or personnel, Ondo Protocol users or other protocol participants. Ondo Finance does not owe, and does not intend to assume, any duties or obligations to Ondo Protocol users or participants, other than duties or obligations arising under laws of general application, such as non-waivable torts.

To the maximum extent permitted by applicable law, all software relating to Ondo Protocol is being provided on an as-is, where-is basis, with no representations or warranties being made to Ondo Protocol participants and with no liability to Ondo Finance or any other person involved in the development of Ondo Protocol. The statements set forth in this announcement also are not intended to be representations, warranties, guarantees or assumptions of duty or liability of any kind, and Ondo Finance hereby disclaims the foregoing and will not be liable for any damages arising from use of Ondo Protocol. In the event of any conflict or inconsistency between this announcement or any other communication and the terms of any software license involved in Ondo Protocol, the terms of the software license shall govern to the exclusion of this announcement and such other communications.

The forward-looking statements in this announcement are subject to numerous assumptions, risks and uncertainties which are subject to change over time. Such assumptions, risks and uncertainties could cause actual results or developments to differ materially from the results and developments anticipated by us. Even if our anticipated results and developments are realized, such results and developments may nevertheless fail to achieve any or all of the expected benefits anticipated by this announcement. We reserve the right to change the plans, expectations and intentions stated and implied herein at any time and for any reason or no reason, in our sole and absolute discretion, and we undertake no obligation to update publicly or revise any forward-looking statement, whether as a result of new information, future developments or otherwise.

This announcement is not intended to provide legal, financial or investment or other advice and we recommend that you do not rely on, and do not make any financial or other decision based on this announcement.