Synfutures, a decentralised derivatives exchange based out of Singapore, has announced that it has raised $14 million in Series A funding led by Polychain Capital, Bybit, Pantera Capital, and others.
This is in addition to the $1.4 million that was raised as seed capital in January of this year. The company focuses on decentralised finance and as a branch of that, it wants to focus on the derivatives side of the market that includes futures and options.
The one major shift that the company has worked on is that, unlike the other derivatives exchanges, any user will be able to create a derivative on any instrument and set their own parameters as far as expiry date and details are concerned. In other words, they would become a market maker themselves and would be able to add liquidity into the system.
“We’re aiming to level the playing field for the average investor by cultivating a free and open market for derivatives trading,” said Rachel Lin, founder, and CEO at SynFutures. “We believe SynFutures will ultimately democratize the futures market by empowering users to trade anything at any time as we embark on this next era of accessibility in investing.”
The company says that its system supports a large number of crypto and other instruments like gold as well and the users would be able to go long or short on these. The company also says that the platform has strict risk management features built into it to avoid any risk to users’ positions at times of high market volatility.
“In traditional financial markets, derivatives trading volume far eclipses that of spot trading and we’re now seeing a similar shift in crypto, especially in centralized exchanges. As DEXs increasingly gain market share, we see a unique opportunity for SynFutures to become the leading futures marketplace of the decentralized economy,” said Olaf Carlson-Wee, Founder and CEO of Polychain Capital. “We look forward to supporting such a strong founding team with extensive experience spanning both traditional finance and blockchain technology, a rarity in the industry, as they bring synthetic derivatives to new users across the globe.”
The company is planning to launch the exchange on the mainnet sometime next month and is currently onboarding users for the alpha launch. The company believes that throwing open the derivatives trading to all users by allowing them to set up their own parameters, it would help to democratise the trading by bringing in a level playing field for all.
