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July 9, 2025 – Velvet.Capital, the innovative intent-based DeFi Operating System, today announced it has successfully raised $3.7 million in a strategic funding round. This significant investment will accelerate the development and widespread adoption of its groundbreaking DeFAI (Decentralized Finance Artificial Intelligence) Trading & Portfolio Management Ecosystem, while also powering the highly anticipated rollout of its new governance and utility token, VELVET. The platform is meticulously designed to make portfolio management and trading frictionless for funds, DAOs, and individual traders, empowering users and institutions to launch and manage on-chain funds and structured products with unprecedented ease, intelligence, and robust security.
Velvet.Capital is at the forefront of building the future of decentralized asset management by seamlessly integrating an advanced AI framework with a robust, non-custodial infrastructure. The platform is meticulously designed to simplify complex DeFi interactions, offering a powerful and intuitive experience for both seasoned crypto-native users and traditional financial entities looking to confidently navigate and leverage the Web3 space.
"Our core vision at Velvet.Capital is to democratize sophisticated DeFi strategies and make them universally accessible, from individual traders to large-scale asset managers," said Vasily Nikonov, Founder & CEO of Velvet.Capital, an accomplished INSEADer and BCGer. "This successful funding round serves as a powerful validation of the market's clear and growing demand for intelligent, secure, and user-friendly solutions within decentralized finance. With our DeFAI Operating System, we are not merely developing a product; we are pioneering an entire ecosystem where multi-agent AI can autonomously identify alpha, execute optimized trades, and manage diversified portfolios, all while ensuring users retain absolute and sovereign control over their digital assets. We firmly believe this represents the next significant leap for DeFi, making it demonstrably smarter, inherently safer, and far more universally accessible."
The funding round drew backing from a distinguished group of investors, including lead investors YZi Labs and Blockchain Founders Fund. Additional participation came from FunFair Ventures, Selini Capital, Mucker Capital, PAKA, LucidBlue, Mindfulness Capital, SkyVision Capital, Gate Labs, Poolz Ventures, NexGen, Cointelegraph Accelerator, Gains Associates, Rarestone, Echo, DWF Ventures, and other strategic investors.
Aly Madhavji, Managing Partner at Blockchain Founders Fund, commented, "Velvet is taking the complexity out of DeFi portfolio creation. They’ve built a stack that allows teams to deploy, automate, and scale on-chain strategies without reinventing infrastructure. We’re excited about their long-term role in powering asset management across crypto."
Key Features and Differentiators of Velvet.Capital’s Vertically Integrated DeFAI Ecosystem:\
- Intent-Based DeFAI Operating System & AI Framework: Velvet.Capital’s foundational innovation lies in its intent-based architecture, which empowers users to express their desired financial outcomes through natural language prompts. The system then intelligently orchestrates complex DeFi protocols and executions, powered by a unique and continuously self-improving multi-agent AI framework. This advanced AI enables users to find alpha, get technical analysis (TA) and price predictions, and execute intricate trades and DeFi actions with remarkable ease.
- Comprehensive AI-Powered Trading Terminal: Users gain access to a sophisticated trading terminal that allows them to explore trending, high-volume, and newly listed tokens, identify top gainers, and discover yield-generating DeFi pools. The platform’s smart execution engine intelligently aggregates liquidity from multiple public pools, private market makers, solvers, and other diverse sources to guarantee the best possible execution price and robustly protect against detrimental MEV (Maximal Extractable Value) front-running and sandwich attacks. An integrated AI trading co-pilot is directly embedded within the application, providing real-time insights and assistance to help users uncover additional alpha.
- Flexible Portfolio Management (Vaults): Velvet.Capital empowers users to create and manage various types of vaults, meticulously tailored to their specific needs and investment strategies. This includes:
- Personal Vaults: Ideal for crypto-native or crypto-curious users who want full control over their portfolio, enabling them to trade any token (one-to-one and many-to-many) and seamlessly utilize multiple DeFi protocols for yield generation in a single click.
- Private or Open Vaults: Designed for public traders, private trading groups, investment DAOs, and Key Opinion Leaders (KOLs)/influencers who wish to nurture their community and build a track record. These vaults allow for whitelisted access or open participation, ensuring followers receive the same execution price and protection from front-running.
- Custom App Spin-off Solution (APIs): For professional entities such as crypto and fintech projects, hedge funds, and asset managers, Velvet.Capital offers an out-of-the-box stack that enables them to launch custom applications under their own branding. This significantly reduces both development costs and time, allowing them to rapidly deploy DeFi products for their clients while meticulously preserving direct client relationships.
- Uncompromising Non-Custodial Security: A paramount design principle of Velvet.Capital is its non-custodial nature. Unlike centralized exchanges, Velvet.Capital never takes custody of user funds, ensuring all trading and portfolio management activities are conducted directly from the user’s own wallet. The platform’s robust infrastructure is built upon the industry-proven Safe standard (which currently secures over $100 billion in digital assets) and has undergone an impressive 7 rigorous security audits, an open audit competition with Hats Finance, and maintains a proactive live bug bounty program, collectively ensuring the highest levels of trust, resilience, and protection against vulnerabilities.
- Robust Multi-Chain Support & Proven Traction: Velvet.Capital has rapidly achieved significant market traction, boasting an impressive user base of over 100,000 individuals who have collectively traded more than $100 million on-chain. The platform recently celebrated its successful public launch on Base and has expanded its advanced trading terminal to Solana, further enhancing its omnichain capabilities and extending its reach across major blockchain ecosystems.
Jake Seltzer, Managing Director at Quantix Capital, stated, "At Quantix we’ve been using Velvet’s vault infrastructure to manage our private investments and native token in one place on Ethereum. Deposits, withdrawals, and swaps are seamless, and the contracts are rock-solid. We’re excited to keep building alongside the Velvet team."
Introducing VELVET & veVELVET: Aligning Long-Term Incentives
The capital raised will also power the rollout of Velvet’s new governance and utility token, VELVET. Velvet’s ecosystem token VELVET unlocks full utility when staked as veVELVET (vote-escrowed VELVET). Users can lock VELVET for up to four years; the longer the lock, the greater the veVELVET received. Balances decay linearly, encouraging continuous re-locking and sustained engagement.
Benefits to veVELVET stakers include:
- Real Yield: A share of platform revenue is used to buy VELVET on-market and distribute it to stakers.
- Additional VELVET Emissions: Tied to individual platform usage.
- Tiered Trading Fee Discounts: And enhanced referral sharing.
- Partner Airdrops & Rewards: From new projects integrating Velvet’s OS.
- Governance Rights: On DAO decisions, integrations, and fee parameters.
Michael O’Connor, Partner at FunFair Ventures, commented, "FunFair shares Velvet Capital’s belief that the future of asset management will be trustless, transparent, and on-chain. By coupling robust security with an intuitive UX, Velvet is laying the foundations for a more open financial ecosystem."
The VELVET listing will be the first opportunity for the general public to purchase VELVET and receive exclusive access to governance, fee discounts, and real yield from the Velvet Ecosystem. Apart from centralized exchanges, users will be able to buy VELVET directly from the Velvet App, and stake to earn additional rewards.
Velvet.Capital is proudly backed by prominent industry players, including Binance Labs, and was recognized as a proud winner of the BNB Chain Hackathon (DeFi category). The visionary leadership team, spearheaded by CEO Vasily Nikonov, includes experienced professionals such as Ankit Raj (specializing in Open Finance and Product, formerly of Red Hat), Navina Lang (a skilled Solidity Engineer), and Jay Singh Dhakad (an expert in Blockchain, DeFi, NFTs, Web3, ReactJs, and NodeJs). This collective expertise brings a wealth of knowledge and innovation in open finance, blockchain engineering, and product development.
With this new injection of capital, Velvet.Capital is exceptionally well-positioned to accelerate its ambitious product roadmap, significantly expand its global footprint, and continue its unwavering mission to make DeFi trading and asset management smarter, safer, and more accessible for everyone. The company remains committed to transparently sharing valuable insights from the industry and its cutting-edge engineering team through its official blog on Substack, and active community channels on Telegram, Twitter, and Discord.
About Velvet.Capital
Velvet.Capital (also known as Velvet Labs) is an intent-based DeFi Operating System and DeFAI Trading & Portfolio Management Ecosystem that empowers users to launch and manage on-chain funds and structured products. Built on a non-custodial and highly secure infrastructure, Velvet.Capital provides individuals, communities, and institutions with advanced AI-powered tools for intelligent trading, sophisticated portfolio management, and optimized yield generation. Backed by industry leaders like Binance Labs, Velvet.Capital is dedicated to democratizing access to complex DeFi strategies and building the future of decentralized finance, where the power of AI seamlessly converges with user sovereignty.
Compiled by CMO Intern team
