DeFi aggregator Zerion snags $8.2M in Series A

Ethereum-based DeFi aggregator, Zerion, has raised $8.2 million in a Series A funding round.

The non-custodial aggregation platform facilitates access to more than 60 Ethereum-based protocols, such as Aave, Yearn.finance, and Curve. Zerion has processed more than $600 million worth of volume in 2021 so far with a median trade of $1,000.

The raise was led by Mosaic Ventures, and also featured participation from Placeholder, Digital Currency Group, and Blockchain.com Ventures, among others.

Mosaic co-founder and partner, Toby Coppel, and venture partner at Placeholder, Brad Burnham, have joined Zerion’s board of directors as part of the round.

The company has now raised $10.2 million in total, building on its $2 million seed round in December 2019.

Zerion hopes the war chest can help its user base grow from roughly 200,000 to above seven figures. The project plans to expand its team from 18 to 25 before 2022, and revamp its trading interface and portfolio tracking feature.

Zerion is planning to enable support for other popular blockchains and layer-twos that are sufficiently popular among DeFi users during the third quarter. The team estimates its customers open their app nine times daily on average.

Related: DeFi aggregator raided by five hackers on launch day

The decentralized finance sector has exploded in popularity over the past year, with the total number of addresses that have interacted with DeFi protocols increasing from 25,000 to nearly 3 million in 12 months.

Despite DeFi tokens suffering massive drawdowns amid the recent crypto market crash, most of the sector’s leading projects have still gained by multiple factors since the start of the year.

In the past seven days DeFi tokens have surged with Aave (AAVE) up 25.4%, Synthetix (SNX)  increasing 46.4%, Uniswap (UNI) up 16.6% and Compound (COMP) up 29.2%.