iZUMi Finance, a multichain decentralized-finance protocol, has closed a $22 million funding round. The money will provide early liquidity for the startup’s on-chain order book decentralized exchange, iZiSwap Pro, which is available on the zkSync Era network.

iZUMi Finance offers one-step "liquidity-as-a-service," or the conversion of one asset into another asset or cash. The platform has about $25 million in total value locked, according to Defi Llama data. The newer iZiSwap Pro product is an automated market maker-driven order book decentralized exchange that the company says reduces transaction costs and mitigates the custody risks of similar products on the market.

The fundraising round was more complicated than a typical “cash in, equity out” arrangement. The company issued an iZUMi zk-Fund through strategic partner Solv Protocol that is a semi-fungible token, or SFT. Investors who purchase the fund receive an SFT in their wallet to represent their share, making them a limited partner of the fund. Upon maturity, investors can redeem the SFT for their principal.

Investors in the round included Unicode Digital, NextGen Digital Venture, Bella Protocol and Incuba Alpha, among others.

DeFi Funding Rounds Liquidity Funding

Brandy Betz

Brandy covered crypto-related venture capital deals for CoinDesk. She previously served as the Technology News Editor at Seeking Alpha and covered healthcare stocks for The Motley Fool. She doesn't currently own any substantial amount of crypto.