Crypto index platform Alongside raises $11M led by a16z

Alongside, a crypto index-focused platform, has closed an $11 million seed spherical led by Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), the corporate solely informed starcrypto.

“At a excessive stage, we’re constructing what I describe as an on-chain Vanguard,” Austin Diamond, CEO and co-founder of Alongside, stated to starcrypto. “The purpose is low-fee index merchandise designed to allow complete market publicity to crypto as a complete.”

Traders within the spherical embody Coinbase Ventures, Franklin Templeton Investments, Village International and Not Boring Capital, in addition to angel buyers. The startup was co-founded by Diamond and Jun Ho Hong, its head of engineering; Gauthier Le Meur, its COO; and Rai Sur, its CTO.

“In numerous methods we wish to be a bridge for brand new individuals to entry this house,” Diamond stated. “Traditionally talking, lots of people have been constructing merchandise for different individuals in crypto and it’s not essentially inclusive of a broader viewers and our cap desk is reflective of that as effectively.”

Alongside’s title derives from a wordplay on mutual funds, “the place everybody invests alongside one another,” Diamond stated. The platform goals to construct merchandise for buyers to diversify by way of passive indices.

Final month, the startup launched its first product, the Alongside Crypto Market Index ($AMKT), which supplies individuals broad publicity to the whole crypto asset market by way of a single token.

The token is “absolutely collateralized by the highest 25 property in crypto,” weighted by market capitalization, Diamond stated. Nonetheless, the highest 25 excludes stablecoins and crypto property with “questionable safety standing,” Diamond added. “Some property within the house are beneath regulatory scrutiny; we will’t embody these as a result of we wish to be compliant.”

All of the property are backed 1:1 by the underlying index parts and “securely custodied by Coinbase,” Diamond stated. The index was capped at prime 25 on account of liquidity, he added. “If you happen to go additional out, there’s not liquidity depth for these property, however the prime 25 has sufficient liquidity.”

The token is obtainable on some international exchanges, crypto wallets, custodians, onramps, and Ethereum scaling options, together with Polygon, Uniswap, SushiSwap, Gate.io, Rainbow and BitGo, to call just a few.

The largest distinction between this index product and conventional fairness indices is the publicity to crypto property, Diamond famous. “Conventional fairness indices or ETFs are indexing fairness merchandise. However in our case, we wish to give direct publicity to crypto property as a complete; that’s one of many greatest distinctions.”

Sooner or later, Alongside will think about launching totally different merchandise centered round DeFi as a class or layer-2 blockchains as a class, Diamond stated. “To start with we simply wished to stay actually easy.”

Over a 10-year horizon, the concept for a complete marketplace for crypto property will look very totally different, Diamond stated. “It gained’t look the best way it does now.”

“Because the market matures and different asset courses stay on-chain, we’ll have the ability to construct merchandise that look totally different than what we now have at the moment.”