September 6th, 2022 - ULTRADE, a multichain DeFi-as-a-Service infrastructure company with a unique GTM strategy, has raised $2.4 million to date, with notable participation from the Algorand Foundation as a direct investor in the seed token round. ULTRADE launched its Testnet on the Algorand blockchain in late June, amassing thousands of users on Algorand, and plans to expand as a multi-chain platform.
"We think ULTRADE’s DeFi-as-a-Service infrastructure solution, offering a whitelabel suite with limit orderbook and perpetuals trading, has strong product market fit within the current defi adoption curve. Such protocol is particularly well suited for a high TPS, instant finality L1 architecture like Algorand. As defi evolves and the user base grows, we expect defi participants to develop comfort and affinity towards more advanced dex solutions. We are of the view that hybrid exchanges could rival established centralized exchanges by giving users access to deep liquidity without sacrificing custodial control."
Daniel Yang, Head of Investment and Diversification, Algorand Foundation
VC participants in ULTRADE’s round include Big Brain Holdings, Tess Ventures, Sarson Funds, Valhalla Capital, among others.
ULTRADE’s unique approach turns trading solutions in DeFi into a commodity that other brands can include in their offerings under a white-label model. While the technology layer is commoditized, the network participants build and share a unified liquidity cloud that gives ULTRADE the most coveted business advantage of all - network effects.
“In today's market, there is no more differentiation in trading solutions. Centralized exchanges are practically all the same, and choosing one over the other is a matter of general convenience with very little brand loyalty. The same goes for DeFi trading, which is mostly limited to Swaps and is overcrowded, with practically no differentiation. And the one big issue all these companies face is the lack of network effects, causing them to spend an inordinate amount of money on user acquisition. Their CAC is high and it’s never coming down. In fact, it gets more expensive as they grow. It’s a bad business model.”
- Dan Goldman, ULTRADE’s founder and CEO
ULTRADE’s business model is designed to create inherent network effects, solving the CAC problem for the company. With a B2B2C strategy, the company is developing a comprehensive DeFi experience that rivals centralized exchanges (CEX), while maintaining the non-custodial tenets of DeFi, all with a white-label model. “We don't believe there should be a tradeoff between CEX usability and decentralized exchanges (DEX)... and anyone should be able to spin up their own DeFi trading solution without having to write a single line of code. Brands should differentiate their core products while providing branded value-add trading solutions using UTRADE’s whitelabel suite.
“We are excited to back ULTRADE on their journey to providing Web3 businesses with powerful new DeFi infrastructure. The ability to launch your own branded exchanges & trading services in a few minutes, with a liquidity network, and keep the lionshare of trading fees is a gamechanger.”
- AlgoBigBrain of Big Brain Holdings
The core of the platform is an all-in-one, non-custodial DeFi trading application dubbed the Ultimate Trading Suite, comprising full limit orderbook trading for Spot and Derivatives such as leveraged perpetuals, as well as their highly advanced Hybrid Aggregating AMM (haAMM) which provides best-execution across LP pools and the orderbook, increasing liquidity depth and reducing slippage, while giving liquidity providers on the orderbook a piece of the fees paid for the provided liquidity.
ULTRADE’s testnet launch in June included the Ultimate Trading Suite’s first product - the Limit Orderbook Spot DEX. Since the launch, thousands of people have already test-traded on the platform, creating nearly 200,000 orders and trades. The company has received to date more than 1,600 feedback submissions from users that included feature requests and UI improvement ideas as well as bug reports, using a professional user feedback system that was embedded in the platform.
The company is now hard at work polishing the first product based on the feedback, as well as preparing to launch the next product of the suite, the haAMM, which is expected to launch in September, followed by the leveraged perpetuals in Q4.
“Over the years, Tess Ventures has invested in numerous prominent blockchain/crypto companies. ULTRADE’s superior execution stands out. Their testnet has had a speedy and successful start - I'm confident that Goldman's vision and leadership will make mainnet a hit.”
- Tess Hau, Founder of Tess Ventures
The investment received so far, amid a tough bear market, marks strong support for Ultrade’s vision of providing brands with the power to launch their own DeFi platforms without having to jumpstart liquidity or write a single line of code.
About Algorand:
The Algorand blockchain — designed by the MIT professor and Turing Award winning cryptographer Silvio Micali — is uniquely capable of delivering on the promise of a borderless global economy. It achieves transaction throughputs at the speed of traditional finance, but with immediate finality, near zero transaction costs, and on a 24/7 basis. Its carbon-neutral platform and unique pure proof-of-stake consensus mechanism solves for the “blockchain trilemma” by achieving both security and scalability on a decentralized protocol, and without a second of downtime since it went live in 2019.
The Algorand Foundation is dedicated to helping fulfill the global promise of the Algorand blockchain by taking responsibility for its sound monetary supply economics, decentralized governance, and healthy and prosperous open-source ecosystem. For more information, visit algorand.foundation
About ULTRADE:
ULTRADE is DeFi-as-a-Service. Full-featured DeFi trading ecosystem giving brands, projects and communities the ability to generate and capture trading fees from their audience in an owned experience.
Media contacts:
Algorand Foundation: press@algorand.foundation
ULTRADE: marketing@ultrade.org
