Panoptic raises $7 million to build perpetual options platform for DeFi

Uniswap-based DeFi protocol Panoptic has raised a $7 million seed round to help develop its decentralized exchange platform with perpetual options.

European crypto investment firm Greenfield Capital led the round with participation from HashKey, gumi Cryptos Capital (gCC), L1D, Heartcore Capital, Comma3 and Zee Prime Capital, among others. Panoptic and Greenfield did not reveal a rating for the round.

The funding will help Panoptic further develop the platform during its current beta testing phase, prior to the launch of an Ethereum mainnet and a V2 product.

The seed funding brings Panoptic’s total raised to $11.5 million, following a $4.5 million seed funding round in December 2022 led by gCC, which included Uniswap Labs Ventures, Coinbase Ventures, Jane Street, Avalanche Foundation’s Blizzard fund and others Participate.

Panoptic’s perpetual options fill a significant gap in the DeFi market, Guillaume Lambert, co-founder and CEO of Panoptic, said in a statement. “With the support of top VCs, our commitment to breakthrough innovation has never been stronger. We envision a future where the financial sector is truly democratized.”

Bringing ‘pan options’ to DeFi

Panoptic plans to bring its so-called ‘panoptions’ perpetual options to the DeFi market. Perpetual options are a financial derivative similar to perpetual futures and offer the same functionality as traditional options trading, but without an expiration date, offering a continuous rollover every 12 seconds.

Built on top of one of the world’s largest decentralized exchanges, Uniswap v3, the Panoptic platform allows users to trade perpetual options between two Ethereum ERC-20 tokens, introducing more advanced and flexible DeFi trading strategies including hedging and generating income.

Panoptic said the options market is “vastly underserved” compared to a traditional financial options market, which typically has more daily activity than the spot market. The latest figures from DefiLlama seem to agree $4.59 million in daily DeFi options volume represents only 0.2% of daily DeFi volume $2.5 billion DEX volume.

“Panoptic’s goal is not to replicate traditional on-chain options, but to innovate within the building blocks of DeFi and thereby help options gain significant traction,” said Gleb Dudka, director at Greenfield Capital. “We believe the team behind Panoptic is well positioned for this because they are thought leaders in the Automated Market Makers (AMMs) space and have built an excellent platform. It simplifies options trading strategies and has an excellent UX and UI, allowing any user to create advanced trading strategies with the simple click of a button.”

Panoptic was founded in July 2022 by Kristensen, former head of research at Advanced Blockchain AG, and Lambert, professor of applied physics at Cornell University.