The platform democratizes access to stocks, commodities, indices, and FX through perpetual swaps onchain
NEW YORK–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Ostium Labs, Co., the developer of the Ostium protocol for perpetual swaps on global markets, today announced $24 million in new funding, including a $20 million Series A round co-led by General Catalyst and Jump Crypto. This follows a previously unannounced $4 million strategic round, bringing Ostium’s total funding to $27.8 million. Ostium enables peer-to-peer trading of traditional markets onchain for the first time, and has seen $25B in cumulative volume to date, including $5B in metals trading volume.
Founded by former Harvard classmates Kaledora and Marco, Ostium addresses a core structural issue in global retail trading infrastructure in a fundamentally new way. While crypto perpetuals have proven that markets can operate with verifiable execution and self-custody, this model has remained largely limited to crypto assets. Traders seeking exposure to traditional markets still depend on conflicted broker-controlled infrastructure — opaque, discretionary systems that dictate pricing, liquidations, and even withdrawals. Ostium replaces this legacy infrastructure with a permissionless, onchain alternative where every trade, spread, and liquidity parameter is transparent and auditable, delivering perpetual swaps exposure across global markets in a verifiably neutral trading environment.
“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. “Our first clear product-market fit came from crypto-native traders who wanted exposure to traditional assets without moving their capital into custodial broker infrastructure. The next arc of growth is about disrupting this legacy market with transparent execution and 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.”
Ostium’s self-custodial architecture ensures that trader capital remains in segregated smart contracts. Its quote-based pricing enables institutional-grade execution and instant settlement. Built on Arbitrum, an Ethereum Layer 2, Ostium is the first and only perpetuals protocol with a majority of activity concentrated in Real World Assets — over 95% of open interest is in traditional markets. During the ongoing gold rally, Ostium has captured over 50% of total onchain gold open interest as the only perps platform where traders can access the move in size with predictable holding costs.
“Ostium is building transparent and resilient infrastructure poised to disrupt the $10T monthly-volume global CFD market,” said Marc Bhargava, Managing Director at General Catalyst. “They were early in creating a way for people to access major global markets directly from their own wallets, and that early conviction shows in their traction today. By making trades and pricing fully transparent, Ostium is helping expand how traditional assets can move onchain in a safer and more open way.”
“In the emerging wave of traditional asset perpetuals, most platforms are choosing to compete at the exchange layer, rebuilding markets that are already deeply liquid offchain,” said Saurabh Sharma, Chief Investment Officer at Jump Crypto. “Ostium takes a different path, 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.”
Existing investors include Balaji Srinivasan, Localglobe, Susquehanna International Group (SIG), Crucible Capital, GSR, Nick Van Eck, Shiliang Tang, and angels from Bridgewater, Two Sigma, and Brevan Howard.
With this Series A funding round, Ostium will expand its asset class coverage, scale its infrastructure to support growing trading volumes, and continue building the most transparent and efficient platform for perpetual trading across all markets.
For more information, please visit: www.ostium.com
About Ostium
Ostium is the decentralized perpetuals platform for global markets. The platform enables users to trade stocks, commodities, indices, and currencies from a self-custodial wallet. Ostium was founded by alumni from Harvard and Bridgewater, and is supported by top-tier investors, including General Catalyst, Jump Crypto, Coinbase Ventures, Crucible Capital, LocalGlobe, Susquehanna (SIG), GSR, and Wintermute Ventures.
About General Catalyst
General Catalyst is a global investment and transformation company that partners with the world’s most ambitious entrepreneurs to drive resilience and applied AI.
We support founders with a long-term view who challenge the status quo, partnering with them from seed to growth stage and beyond.
With offices in the U.S., Europe, and India, we have supported the growth of 800+ businesses, including Airbnb, Anduril, Anthropic, Applied Intuition, Commure, Glean, Gusto, Helsing, Hubspot, Kayak, Livongo, Mistral, Ramp, Samsara, Snap, Stripe, Sword, and Zepto.
For more: www.generalcatalyst.com @generalcatalyst
About Jump Crypto
Jump Crypto is part of the Jump Trading Group, a research-driven quantitative trading firm and one of the largest traders, by volume, across asset classes. Jump Crypto is also a key infrastructure builder and R&D contributor to the crypto ecosystem and is excited about the prospects of Web3 and blockchain technology to revolutionize open, community-driven networks.
For more: www.jumpcrypto.com @jump_
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Garreth Browne
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M: +353 86 192 0966
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