Crypto clearinghouse Glacis Labs raises $6.8 million seed to expand ZeroDelta platform

Glacis Labs, the startup behind crypto clearing platform ZeroDelta, has raised $6.8 million in a seed funding round as the platform comes out of stealth.

Lightspeed Faction led the round, with Franklin Templeton, Coinbase Ventures, A.GAIN (formerly IDC Ventures), Protein Capital, and Techni Ventures participating. The round was raised as a single tranche after fundraising began late last year and closed in March, Jacob Blish, co-founder and CEO of Glacis Labs, told The Block. The round was structured as equity with token warrants, Blish said, declining to disclose Glacis' valuation.

As part of the deal, Lightspeed Faction received a non-voting board observer seat, Blish said, declining to disclose who from the venture firm would hold it.

Crypto clearing platform

Founded in January 2024, Glacis has built ZeroDelta, a multichain clearing platform that matches, nets and settles digital asset transfers across blockchains. The platform is built on Glacis Core, the startup's cross-chain messaging layer, and AirLift, its token transport layer. ZeroDelta currently supports stablecoins and plans to expand into tokenized securities, real-world assets, and foreign exchange.

The supported stablecoins are Circle's USDC, Tether's USDT, and Ethena's synthetic dollar USDe.

"We are starting with stablecoins because that is where the market is," Blish said. "If you look at the onchain data, real-world assets or RWAs are still nascent and require significantly more work around compliance and user onboarding. That said, we are already integrating a number of RWAs from issuers, which will be announced soon. We have also begun conversations with FX issuers outside the U.S. and will launch those as well."

Last week, EDX Markets, which operates an institutional-only crypto trading platform with a central clearinghouse, also raised a $76 million Series C funding round, with Japan's SBI Holdings as the sole investor. When asked how ZeroDelta differs from EDX, Blish said both platforms share the same core idea that matching transactions before settlement reduces costs and lowers counterparty risk. While EDX clears obligations inside a single trading venue, ZeroDelta continuously clears asset flows across multiple blockchains and venues before settling the remaining balance onchain, Blish said. As a result, he added, the two businesses are more complementary than competitive.

As for other competition, Blish said platforms such as Circle's Cross-Chain Transfer Protocol (CCTP), LayerZero, Across, and CoW Protocol overlap with parts of Glacis' technology stack, and that many are expected to become partners or customers rather than direct competitors.

"Our advantage is the combination. We focus on native mint/burn transport with no bridge risk, a matching engine that clears matched flow at par before anything moves, and neutrality, meaning no first-party desk trading against the people who route through us," Blish said. "Any one piece is replicable, but the combination is what a competitor would have to rebuild their stack to match, and neutrality is the piece the incumbents structurally can’t copy, because their business model is being the counterparty."

Institutions-focused offering

ZeroDelta's customers are all institutional, falling into three groups, Blish said. Those include market makers and dealers that frequently rebalance assets across blockchains, aggregators and solver networks seeking lower-cost settlement routes, and stablecoin issuers and tokenization platforms that require around-the-clock liquidity.

Glacis currently has a team of 10 employees working remotely, primarily across New York and Europe, Blish said. The startup plans to hire additional staff across engineering, compliance, and go-to-market functions over the coming year.

Glacis generates revenue by charging fees on transaction volume cleared across its network, Blish said. Glacis said ZeroDelta has cleared more than $1 billion in transaction volume and operates at a $1.5 billion annualized run rate.

"That is the dollar value of transactions across Glacis’ live transport rails, which ZeroDelta is built on. Roughly 90% of it is stablecoins," Blish said.

Looking ahead, Blish said the biggest challenge will be building enough transaction flow for the clearing engine to become increasingly efficient while also meeting the slower onboarding requirements of institutional customers. He added that investors such as Franklin Templeton and Coinbase Ventures can help by bringing distribution and liquidity alongside capital.