Saddle Raises $7.5M to Reduce Slippage in DeFi Trading

Saddle, an open-source automated market maker (AMM) for trading between pegged value crypto assets, has closed a $7.5 million funding round led by Polychain and Electric Capital with participation from Nascent, Project Galaxy and others. The fundraise follows a $4.3 million raise in January.

• Founded in 2020, San Francisco-based Saddle is a decentralized AMM on the Ethereum blockchain that’s optimized for tokens that have their value pegged to an underlying asset in some way. The value of a tokenized bitcoin, for example, is supposed to equal 1 BTC.

• Saddle says it enables cheap, efficient and low-slippage swaps for traders and high-yield pools for limited partners (LPs). Slippage in this context refers to the difference between a trade’s expected price and the price at which the trade is executed. Slippage tends to happen when markets are volatile.

• “This investment will enable Saddle to continue advancing its offerings that allow pegged value crypto assets to achieve efficiency, profitability and growth. With this funding, we plan to expand our team, help bring low-slippage stablecoins to every chain in DeFi, position Saddle to better serve a multi-chain future, and invest in the Saddle community and creator metaverse,” said Saddle founder Sunil Srivatsa in the press release.

• Customers only need an ERC-20 compatible wallet like MetaMask to use Saddle. The company’s protocol is audited and secured by blockchain security firms like Certik, Quantstamp and OpenZeppelin.

• “Saddle’s team is mission-driven and the vision is big – from decreasing slippage between asset swaps to providing liquidity into Saddle pools,” said Polychain General Partner Niraj Pant in the release.