Qredo, a new decentralized digital asset management infrastructure & product suite, today announced the close of an $11 million seed round led by a diverse group of investors including G1, Gumi Cryptos, Maven 11, Spartan Group, 1kx, and Kenetic.
“The next generation of DeFi players will be institutions and these companies are actively looking for ways to enter the crypto market in a secure and compliant manner without sacrificing their ability to respond to economic opportunities, ” said Anthony Foy, CEO of Qredo. ”This funding will help us continue building this critical technology to bridge the gap between the security and governance of traditional finance and the rapidly evolving new world of DeFi.”
Qredo uses a unique blockchain protocol that enables users to access cryptocurrencies on layer-1 blockchains, such as Bitcoin, and Ethereum over a layer-2 network. This allows users to securely participate in DeFi systems such as cross-chain liquidity pools, trading collateralized derivatives, and executing cross-chain atomic swaps.
Since its inception in 2018, Qredo has worked with a variety of established leaders in the crypto industry to develop innovative solutions. In addition to the well-established financial investors, Qredo has also attracted a stellar group of strategic investors: Celsius, Deribit, Wintermute, GSR, CMS Holdings, Kronos Research, and 3commas.
“Deribit is proud to work with Qredo to facilitate and settle digital asset transactions at lightning speeds,” said John Jansen, CEO of Deribit, another Qredo seed investor. “We look forward to seeing Qredo build out streamlined custodial services, especially for the crypto futures and options market. These services will highly improve the efficiency of digital asset derivatives markets, with customers in complete charge over their digital assets.
The funds from this seed round will fuel the next stage of Qredo’s growth, which includes doubling its R&D team and bringing in additional talent at the C-suite level, along with Qredo’s anticipated version 2 launch. With version 2, Qredo will move significantly closer to achieving its ultimate goal of transitioning to a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO).
Live
Qredo version 1 mainnet is live today and the company operates 24 nodes in 6 tier 4 data centers: Tokyo, Hong Kong, Singapore, New York, Chicago, and London. The successful release of version 1 has allowed Qredo to build, test and operate, prior to transitioning to version 2 decentralization.
Additionally, validators on version 2 are able to earn QRDO governance tokens as incentives, through a novel revenue-sharing mechanism within the network.
“The trickle of institutional capital flowing into the digital asset market is rapidly turning into a torrent,” said Alex Mashinsky, CEO of Celsius Network, which also invested in the round. “We are excited to see Qredo bring better speed, security, and compliance into DeFi and provide a new way for institutions to interact with crypto on terms they are familiar with.”
The full group of investors includes Amnis Ventures, Artus, Borderless Capital, Celsius, CMS Holdings, Connect.Capital, Deribit, G1, GSR, Gumi Cryptos, Kenetic, Kronos, Maven 11, 1kx, Quantstamp, Q-Stone Partners, Spartan Group, SVK Crypto, Tokentus, 3commas, Wintermute, Yellow, and Zhou Holdings.
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