On-Chain Structured Products Infrastructure Firm City Protocol Raises $11 Million

City Protocol, a developer of infrastructure for on-chain structured products, said on Aug. 25 that it had completed a combined $11 million seed and pre-Series A funding round.

Participants in the round included crypto venture capital and market-making firms Dragonfly, Jump Crypto, CMT Digital, Stratified Capital, Adaverse and Mirana.

City Protocol is developing infrastructure that supports the issuance, operation and distribution of on-chain financial products. It divides the issuance and operating process into three modules — tokenization, vaults, and issuance and operations — allowing teams with asset-management capabilities to launch financial products through API calls. The company said it also secured the system with smart contract-based multisignature permission controls and an on-chain fee disclosure framework.

Benzo, the first platform built on City Protocol's infrastructure, currently operates four vaults and has $30 million in total value locked. It offers on-chain versions of strategies traditionally centered on institutions, including quantitative hedging, exchange arbitrage and private lending.

The company said it plans to launch a lineup of thematic portfolio products through Benzo soon. The products are designed to automatically trade and rebalance assets in users' wallets, and will include a "People Tracker" that follows the public portfolios of prominent figures and "Sector Themes" focused on specific industries.