Derivatives DEX SynFutures Raises $14M in Series A

Decentralised derivatives exchange SynFutures, that aims to enable “trading on anything with a price feed”, has raised $14 million in a Series A funding round, the DEX announced on 16 June.

According to the press release, the oversubscribed funding round was led by Polychain Capital, and also saw participation from Framework, Pantera Capital, Bybit, Wintermute, CMS, Kronos, and IOSG Ventures. Including the $1.4 million seed round from January, SynFutures has so far raised a total of $15.4 million. The founder and CEO of Polychain Capital, Olaf Carlson-Wee, elaborated on the business strategy:

“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.”

The goal of SynFutures is to allow users to list their own futures contracts, add trading pairs of any assets — including cryptocurrencies, traditional equities, metals, and others — with any expiry date on the platform. The DEX is currently onboarding clients to its closed alpha, but has reassured that it plans to open up its platform to the general public next month, during its mainnet launch. The newly acquired funds will help the DEX cover its hiring and development costs, while the rest will be used as the initial liquidity pool.

SynFutures decided to focus its development efforts on a derivatives-specific DeFi platform following the success of other DeFi projects, such as decentralised spot exchange Uniswap. The founder and CEO of SynFutures, Rachel Lin, described the mission of the platform as levelling “the playing field for the average investor” by creating a free and open market for derivatives trading.

In order to protect its users from unintended price volatility in the crypto market, such as a flash loan attack, the DEX has employed a rigid modelling and risk management system that “introduces the best practices of traditional finance to the DeFi space”.