Nomura Backs $6M Round for On-Chain Fund Platform Solv Protocol

Singapore-based on-chain fund protocol Solv Protocol raised $6 million in a funding round. Investors in the round included Laser Digital, a subsidiary of Japanese banking giant Nomura Securities. The capital will help the startup expand its team and continue working on the technological development of its platform.

Other investors in the round included UOB Venture Management, Mirana Ventures, Emirates Consortium, Matrix Partners, Apollo Capital, HashCIB, Geek Cartel, Bing Ventures and Bytetrade Labs.

"Solv has built a trustless institutional DeFi platform integrating brokers, underwriters, market makers, and custodians to create the first fund infrastructure on the blockchain to bridge DeFi, CeFi and TradFi liquidity,” said Olivier Deng, global chief operating officer for the wholesale digital office at Nomura, in a press release.

Solv offers decentralized liquidity infrastructure that allows organizations to raise money through the creation, usage and sale of financial products. The Solv process begins with an onboarding process for crypto-native market makers, venture capitalists and decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) interested in using the platform. Approved users can then create financial products that are wrapped in semi-fungible tokens (SFT). The SFT is distributed through the Solv platform or an underwriter in order to receive liquidity from interested buyers or investors. The user collect income and pay yields to the investors either over time or when the SFT is settled.

Solv V3 launched during the second quarter and has since grown to $29.16 million in total value locked, according to DeFi Llama data. The startup said it has served over 25,000 users and facilitated over $100 million in trading volume since it launched in the second quarter of this year.

UPDATE (Aug. 1 14:21 UTC): Adds Bing Ventures to list of investors; updates final paragraph to refer to the newest version, Solv V3.