Avantis Raises $8M in Series A Funding to Build DeFi’s Universal Leverage Layer for Real World Assets & Markets.
New York, New York, June 3rd, 2025, Chainwire
Pantera Capital and Founders Fund co-led the round to accelerate Avantis’ mission of bringing 24/7 leverage trading to global macro assets and real-world markets – from gold and FX to commodities, indices, equities, sports, and prediction markets.
Avantis has raised an $8M Series A round, co-led by Pantera Capital and Founders Fund, both of whom participated in Avantis’ seed round in June 2023. The round also included participation from Symbolic Capital, SALT Fund, Flowdesk, and other strategic investors.
Since launching on Base mainnet in February 2024, Avantis has facilitated over $6.5B in trading volume, serving 55,000+ onchain traders and liquidity providers. As one of the only exchanges where users can seamlessly trade assets like BTC, Gold, and USD/JPY in a single terminal, Avantis has become the default destination for cross-asset leverage trading onchain.
Avantis is building for a future beyond crypto’s boom-and-bust cycles. While crypto-native markets often rely on speculative bubbles, real trading opportunities emerge from global macro shifts — inflation, interest rates, elections, and geopolitical events. While onchain RWAs have brought some much needed diversification and stable yield opportunities to DeFi, over 90% of RWA TVL still comes from tokenized U.S. Treasuries or private credit. Tokenization alone is clearly not enough.
Avantis solves this with a new approach: synthetic, self-custodial access to real-world assets (RWAs) and markets. In just under a year, Avantis has launched over 15 RWA pairs, ranging from exotic FX like Turkish Lira to household commodities like Gold and Crude-Oil, all powered by its novel synthetic AMM. Traders can express macro views with leverage, while liquidity providers can power these trades composably.
“Avantis is pioneering a new class of DeFi infrastructure by bringing global macro markets natively onchain. As real-world asset adoption matures, companies like Avantis will be the universal leverage layer for everything from interest rate volatility to sports,” said Paul Veradittakit, General Partner at Pantera Capital. “We’re excited to continue supporting them as they push DeFi beyond just crypto-native speculation.”
By Q4 2025, Avantis plans to expand to 100+ RWAs (including equities), with deep liquidity and innovative incentives. During the Dollar Yen carry trade unwind and recent Turkish Lira volatility, Avantis enabled onchain traders to act in real time — a glimpse into DeFi’s future: fast, global, and reactive.
“Assets like Gold, Oil, and FX are trillion-dollar markets. CeFi built the first leverage rails, but DeFi can build them better — 24/7 trading, composable liquidity, and global access,” said Harsehaj Singh, CEO of Lumena Labs, the core contributor to Avantis. “This isn’t theory — it’s happening now, and we’re scaling it.”
Avantis has a history of innovative firsts, including being the first exchange to offer programmatic loss-rebates to traders (with over $500K in rebates paid out), and launching zero-fee perpetuals, a new derivative built for high leverage traders, who only want to pay fees from their profits.
“Our core unlock is being able to use our AMM architecture to bring leverage to all kinds of markets, enabling us to build a universal leverage layer. We’ve done this for real-world and crypto assets, but our vision is to extend this for all kinds of real-world markets, such as sports and prediction markets. Sports betting and event predictions are emerging markets with massive TAMs, high growth, and non-cyclical demand (sports or elections don’t pause for recessions!). Most importantly, they are under-served in terms of leverage, and that is where Avantis comes in.”
Avantis’ roadmap is guided by their vision to build DeFi’s universal leverage hub for real-world assets and markets:
- Bringing 100+ macro assets onchain, including major equities and indices.
- Launching Avantis v2: Built from the ground-up for macro traders, with 10x capital efficiency and cross-margin.
- A native money market powered by the Avantis USDC market-making vault.
- 0-1 leverage products tied to non-cyclical, real-world markets such as sports betting and event predictions.
About Avantis
Avantis is building DeFi’s universal leverage layer for real-world assets and markets, offering seamless access to both crypto and global markets. Built by Lumena Labs, Avantis combines synthetic liquidity, macro exposure, and trader-first incentives in one fully onchain exchange. Users can learn more at avantisfi.com.
