Ostium Secures $24 Million in Fresh Funding, Co-Led by General Catalyst and Jump Crypto, to Revolutionize Global Markets Onchain

Ostium Labs, Co., the developer behind the groundbreaking Ostium protocol, today announced a significant infusion of capital, totaling $24 million, to accelerate its mission of bringing global financial markets onto the blockchain. The funding package includes a robust **$20 million Series A round** co-led by top-tier venture firm General Catalyst and crypto-focused investment powerhouse Jump Crypto. This follows a previously unannounced $4 million strategic round, bringing Ostium’s total funding to $27.8 million.

The Ostium platform is pioneering the peer-to-peer trading of traditional financial assets—including stocks, commodities, indices, and foreign exchange (FX)—as perpetual swaps onchain for the first time. Since its inception, the protocol has already witnessed over $25 billion in cumulative trading volume, notably achieving $5 billion in metals trading.

Disrupting Legacy Brokerage Infrastructure

Founded by former Harvard classmates Kaledora Kiernan-Linn and Marco, Ostium directly targets a core vulnerability in the global retail trading ecosystem: the reliance on opaque and often conflicted broker-controlled infrastructure. Unlike traditional Contract for Difference (CFD) brokers, whose systems dictate pricing, liquidations, and withdrawals, Ostium offers a transparent, auditable, and permissionless onchain alternative.

“Since Ostium’s earliest days, our thesis has been that the global CFD broker market will be disrupted by DeFi. Our ambition is to build the platform to make that possible,” said Kaledora Kiernan-Linn, co-founder and CEO of Ostium. She highlighted the platform’s initial success in attracting crypto-native traders seeking exposure to traditional assets without sacrificing self-custody. “This investment from strategic investors like Jump Crypto will enable us to scale access to these deep global markets on blockchain rails, all while leveraging pricing from the original liquidity venues without building a fragmented exchange layer onchain.”

Transparent Execution and Institutional-Grade Technology

Built on Arbitrum, an Ethereum Layer 2 solution, Ostium employs a self-custodial architecture, ensuring that trader capital remains secured within segregated smart contracts. The platform’s quote-based pricing model facilitates institutional-grade execution and instant settlement, providing a verifiably neutral trading environment.

Remarkably, Ostium stands as the first and only perpetuals protocol with the majority of its activity concentrated in Real World Assets (RWA), with over 95% of its open interest in traditional markets. During the recent surge in gold prices, the protocol captured over 50% of the total onchain gold open interest, offering traders a reliable avenue to access the commodity with predictable holding costs.

Marc Bhargava, Managing Director at General Catalyst, commented on the firm’s conviction. “Ostium is building transparent and resilient infrastructure poised to disrupt the $10T monthly-volume global CFD market. By making trades and pricing fully transparent, Ostium is helping expand how traditional assets can move onchain in a safer and more open way.”

Saurabh Sharma, Chief Investment Officer at Jump Crypto, emphasized Ostium’s unique strategy. “Ostium takes a different path [from competitors], competing with centralized brokers by quoting directly from the real liquidity that already powers equities, FX, and commodity markets offchain. We’re proud to back a team that is expanding access to the largest and most liquid global markets.”

The funding round saw participation from existing investors, including Balaji Srinivasan, Localglobe, Susquehanna International Group (SIG), Crucible Capital, GSR, Nick Van Eck, and Shiliang Tang, along with angels from Bridgewater, Two Sigma, and Brevan Howard. The capital will be deployed to expand asset class coverage, scale infrastructure for growing trading volumes, and cement Ostium’s position as the most transparent and efficient platform for perpetual trading across all markets.

Editorial Opinion: The Foundation for a Decentralized Financial Future

The substantial investment into Ostium, particularly the leadership shown by General Catalyst and Jump Crypto, validates a pivotal shift in the financial landscape: the inevitable migration of traditional market access onto decentralized rails. This isn’t merely about creating another trading venue; it’s about fundamentally restructuring the relationship between the trader and the market. By leveraging blockchain’s inherent transparency and self-custody capabilities, Ostium is not just disrupting the CFD brokers—it’s offering a superior, verifiable, and trust-minimized alternative that the legacy system simply cannot match.

The company’s focus on drawing liquidity from existing offchain venues, rather than fragmenting markets by creating a new exchange layer, is a strategic masterstroke. This approach respects the depth and efficiency of established global markets while layering on the benefits of DeFi, making Ostium an essential infrastructure layer for the evolving intersection of Wall Street and Web3. Their early success in capturing RWA volume, such as gold, demonstrates a clear product-market fit and indicates that the future of accessing even the largest, most liquid global assets will be governed by smart contracts and absolute transparency. This trajectory positions Ostium not just for success, but as a critical enabler for true global financial inclusion and open market access.

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