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Fordefi Raises $18M Seed Round to Launch Institutional DeFi Wallet and Security Platform

Cointime Official

Backed by top crypto VCs and built by crypto industry veterans, Fordefi has launched the industry's first institutional MPC wallet and Web3 gateway for crypto-native funds

Fordefi, a financial technology and software company, today announced an $18 million seed round and the public launch of its institutional MPC wallet built for transacting on decentralized applications (dApps). Led by Lightspeed Venture Partners, the investors of the firm's initial capital raise also include Electric Capital, Alameda Research, Jump Crypto, Castle Island, Pantera Capital, Illuminate Financial, PayPal Alumni Fund, Nima Capital, Digital Currency Group, Defiance Capital and StarkWare.

Introducing the Fordefi Platform

Co-founders Josh Schwartz, CEO, Dima Kogan, CTO, and Michael Volfman, Vice President of Research and Development, began developing the Fordefi platform in 2021, an unprecedented year for crypto adoption, as institutions took notice of the explosive growth and massive volumes of digital assets moved into the markets. A boom in the development of new blockchains and decentralized applications created opportunities for investing that institutions could not safely participate in, as available wallets had been designed years before and lacked the technology to securely and confidently connect them.

A first of its kind wallet and security platform, Fordefi enables market participants to easily and securely connect to decentralized applications. Fordefi's platform is the only institutional MPC wallet on the market built for firms transacting on decentralized applications across blockchains. The solution delivers a previously unavailable degree of insight into transactions, translating smart contracts into language that users can understand, simulating every transaction in advance and independently verifying dApp names. Its advanced MPC key management capabilities are built to protect against any single point of failure, and the platform's unique policy management capabilities offer users the ability to create and define their own workflows, proactively protecting themselves from both internal and external vulnerabilities.

Please contact [email protected] for a demonstration.

About Fordefi's Founders

Josh Schwartz, Dima Kogan and Michael Volfman founded Fordefi after establishing themselves with decades of experience as leaders in crypto, cybersecurity, and financial services. Schwartz served as Chief Operating Officer at Curv, an institutional MPC wallet acquired by PayPal in 2021, and was Vice President of Sales at digital custody platform BitGo. Dr. Kogan's career spans more than 15 years in academia, industry and government. He received his PhD from Stanford with a specialization in applied cryptography and was awarded the "Best Young Researcher" prize at Eurocrypt 2018, the Theory of Cryptography Conference 2019, and Eurocrypt 2020. Volfman is an engineering manager with 20 years of experience in cybersecurity, serving as Vice President of R&D at Toka, was Chief Technology Officer and co-founder of an edtech startup, and a Director at Guardicore.

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