Ex-Goldman Sachs Traders Raise $4M for DeFi Risk Management Startup

Ondo Finance, a protocol meant to accelerate decentralized finance (DeFi) adoption among institutional investors by minimizing risk, has raised $4 million in a funding round led by Pantera Capital. 

CoinFund, Protoscale Capital, The LAO and Digital Currency Group (the parent company of CoinDesk) also participated in the round. 

Two former Goldman Sachs traders, Nathan Allman and Pinku Surana, founded Ondo Finance earlier this year. The protocol is meant to allow DeFi traders to both hedge and capitalize on risk, depending on their inclination. 

Ondo allows users to originate risk-isolated, fixed-yield loans backed by digital assets. Both lenders and borrowers contribute capital into Ondo’s smart contract-enforced “Vaults,” which offer two positions: “Fixed Yield,” which mitigates risk, and “Variable Yield,” which maximizes returns. 

“Fixed income remains the missing piece that decentralized finance needs to go mainstream,” Paul Veradittakit, partner at Pantera Capital, said in a statement. “Ondo unlocks downside protection and relative certainty in forecasting returns for institutional investors looking to allocate to the attractive yields in the DeFi space.”

Ondo launched its first two Vaults in late July with caps of $2 million and $5 million, which Allman told CoinDesk filled up “more or less immediately.”

Ondo launched four more Vaults on Tuesday with an increased $10 million cap on invested assets.