Zeta Markets: Solana-Powered DEX Raises $8.5m Ahead of Launch
Zeta Markets has raised an $8.5M strategic funding round led by Jump Capital, which will help jump start its DeFi futures and options exchange built on Solana. Less Than $0.01 in
Zeta Markets has raised an $8.5M strategic funding round led by Jump Capital, which will help jump start its DeFi futures and options exchange built on Solana.
Less Than $0.01 in Gas Fees
The fintech firm will use the funds to accelerate the development and business growth of Zeta Markets, initiate community grants to encourage composable project integrations as well as onboard key strategic and market making partners.
The decentralized platform will offer liquid, non-custodial, and under-collateralized derivatives trading. Users will have access to pricing updates, liquidations, the ability to execute trades and settle positions sub-second while paying less than $0.01 in gas fees, the firm claims.
Tristan Frizza, Core Contributor to Zeta Markets, commented: “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.”
Options and Futures for Crypto
Zeta Markets will launch with both options and futures for the popular cryptocurrencies, undercollateralized trading, portfolio cross-margin, sub-second mark-to-market updates, instant settlement. Serum will supply Zeta with an orderbook and matching engine.
Zeta’s “under-collateralized nature” allows traders to post a fraction of the full price of the future/option, while also performing cross-margining so that traders can account for all holdings whilst sharing profit and loss across all positions.
Serum and Pyth are critical partners for Zeta in order to attract widespread liquidity and adoption to the underlying exchange, with the goal of making derivatives a first-class citizen in DeFi markets.
Saurabh Sharma, Partner at Jump Capital, said: “DeFi options are ripe for innovation but have experienced low adoption so far due to high gas fees and low throughput “, said Saurabh Sharma, Partner and crypto lead at Jump Capital. “Leveraging Solana’s high throughput and unique hybrid OMM-orderbook approach, Zeta is enabling a unique DeFi Options primitive which will be a game changer for this space.”
The round, conducted via private token sale, had 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. 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.
Reporting by Rick Steves. Filed 9 December 2021, 15:39 GMT.
Senior Reporter, Regulation and Fintech
Rick Steves has seen business and economics through many lenses. He joined the financial services industry in 2009, and has been a financial journalist since 2011.
