Overview

We are thrilled to announce that Zeta Markets has successfully raised a $5 million strategic round, bringing Zeta’s total funding to date to $13.5 million.

The round was led by Electric Capital with participation from DACM, Airtree Ventures and Selini Capital, along with prominent angel investors such as Anatoly Yakovenko of Solana, Mert Mumtaz of Helius, Richard Wu of Tensor, Marius Ciubotariu of Kamino, Stepan Simkin of Squads, Alex Smirnov of Debridge, Genia Mikhalchenko of Pyth, Nom of Bonk, JMR Luna of Wintermute, and others.

We extend our gratitude to Electric Capital and our new investors for their unwavering support. We are thrilled to have such dedicated industry leaders onboard as we keep pushing the boundaries of DeFi to build the ultimate perpetuals exchange, free of compromises.

The Road Ahead

From the outset, Zeta was built for speed, simplicity, and security. Emerging from the second Solana hackathon in 2021, our journey has been marked by resilience and innovation. We have continued to build and adapt through the 2022 bear market, the FTX collapse, and network challenges, committed to delivering the best trading experience for everyone, only possible on Solana.

To date, Zeta is vying for the top position on Solana's DEX leaderboard, holding a market share of over 41%. Our platform has processed more than 6M trades and $6B in volume for over 100k wallets. Our goal is to build a protocol that lasts beyond the next decade to onboard a significant number of the world’s traders, and these foundations show promise of that hope.

The round helps accelerate this momentum, enabling a ground-up DEX redesign, expanding our team, and enhancing our go-to-market strategy as we gear up for the launch of our native token, which will mark our shift towards a community-centric protocol.

The fundraise will support the development of the first DeFi Layer 2 (L2) on Solana, which aims to achieve the performance of a centralized exchange, whilst maintaining the security and self-custodial nature of a decentralized exchange. Zeta’s L2 will maintain Central Limit Orderbooks (CLOB) as a first-class citizen and allow direct bridging from Solana to tap into the rapidly growing pool of DeFi liquidity. Users will be able to quickly deposit funds into our rollup from Solana L1 and begin trading, while enjoying a drastically enhanced user experience and significantly improved order latency and throughput. This latest round signifies a crucial step in getting our vision across the finish line.

Zeta and Investor Voices

“We are thrilled to see the Zeta Markets team deepen their commitment to Solana with the unveiling of their ambitious L2 roadmap.” said Avichal Garg, Co-founder and General Partner of Electric Capital “We have seen firsthand their perseverance through the bear market and their commitment to the Solana ecosystem. The Zeta team’s focus on building high-quality, decentralized solutions that solve real problems for users has resulted in tremendous momentum this year. After launching, they have been 50% of perp volume on Solana for many days. We are proud to continue to support them as they broaden their vision beyond their successful DEX.” - said Avichal Garg, Co-founder and GP of Electric Capital

”We are incredibly grateful for the support of Electric Capital and our new investors who doubled down on our vision despite the uncertainty of the bear market. At Zeta Markets, our aim is to craft the ultimate one-stop trading platform, where users can benefit from the transparency of DeFi without having to sacrifice convenience and speed. This fundraise helps accelerate our current momentum and deliver an order of magnitude improvement via a ground-up redesign of our DEX.” said Tristan Frizza, Co-founder of Zeta Markets.