(image: Korea Bizwire)
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates, July 14 (Korea Bizwire) – ZKX, the first permissionless derivatives trading protocol built on StarkNet, StarkWare’s L2 network that leverages ZK rollups, announced it has raised $4.5m in seed funding. Investors include StarkWare, Alameda Research, Amber Group, Huobi, Crypto.com and others. In addition, ZKX received investment from notable individual investors including Sandeep Nailwal, Co-Founder of Polygon, and Ashwin Ramachandran, General Partner at DragonFly Capital. The funding will go towards further development of ZKX’s core offerings, the ZKX open-source protocol, DAO funding and continued growth of the ZXK ecosystem.
The ZKX protocol is creating new frameworks to solve critical challenges in the DeFi market, including over-reliance on oracles, difficulty in bootstrapping liquidity for new derivatives, and centralized listing mechanisms. The ZKX mainnet is anticipated to go live in Q4 followed by the launch of its first product – an exchange that will enable trading of crypto derivatives on StarkNet with built-in rewards mechanisms, liquidity provisioning, and complex trading strategies.
ZKX was founded in 2021 by Eduard Jubany Tur, Naman Sehgal, and Vitaly Yakovlev. Prior to founding ZKX, Eduard and Naman held leadership positions at SOSV, one of the world’s top VC firms with over $1.2 billion AUM. The 30-person ZKX team includes top talent from the likes of Flipkart, PayTM, and Byju’s, with decades of shared experience in venture building, scaling technology startups, and financial derivatives structuring in over eight countries.
Eduard Jubany, Founder at ZKX, “We are determined to build an exchange that breaks down the barriers to using DeFi, and we’re doing that by building a protocol that enables trading derivatives of assets on StarkNet. Our goal is to expand the reach of ZKX across emerging markets, combining sound technology with a friendly user experience, and an ecosystem that enables users to have fair representation within a DAO. We are grateful to have the support of our investors who understand and believe in our vision. This milestone is just the beginning of a breakthrough year for ZKX and our partners. We’re creating new fundamentals for ZKX as well for the DeFi community, raising the bar for everyone.”
How ZKX’s Derivative Protocol Is Solving Market Challenges
ZKX is setting out to dispel the “decentralization illusion” that afflicts the present DeFi landscape by creating an ecosystem for derivatives anchored in decentralization. ZKX’s unique technology offers the following:
- Powered by DAOs: Enabling DAOs and projects to list derivatives markets for their tokens and offering trading incentives for the community.
- Liquid Governance: Allowing the separation of representation and token-holding in DAOs and fair representation for all stakeholders by providing Virtual Governance Shares (VGS) according to each stakeholder’s behavior in the protocol.
- Decentralized Order Book: Inclusive of a node network to help scale the derivatives exchange with a permissionless node client.
- L2 Scaling: ZKX trading interface powered by StarkNet, StarkWare’s ZK rollup, which provides low fees, instant settlements, fast withdrawals on the platform, and the support of the ever-growing StarkWare ecosystem.
ZKX has also received investment from Hashkey Capital, Orange DAO, Angel DAO, Dweb3, Caballeros Capital, Cluster Capital, and Gate.io. The protocol recently joined forces with Nethermind for a code audit this summer.
ZKX is poised to advance the burgeoning derivatives ecosystem based on principles of trustless, permissionless, and borderless DeFi. For more information, please visit ZKX.fi.
About ZKX
ZKX is a permissionless protocol for derivatives built on StarkNet, with a decentralized order book and a unique way to offer complex financial instruments as swaps. The protocol is powered by a DAO and will provide an elevated trading experience with gamified leaderboards and unique liquid governance. ZKX’s mission is to democratize access to global yields through its offerings to anyone, anywhere.
Media Contacts:
tanisha@zkx.fi
Elise.miller@serotonin.co
Source: ZKX via GLOBE NEWSWIRE
