Some of DeFi’s Leading Investors Are Backing a New Options Protocol

Lyra, an options trading protocol built on Ethereum scaling network Optimism, received $3.3 million in a seed round led by Framework Ventures and ParaFi Capital.

The DeFi Alliance, Orthogonal, Robert Leshner’s Robot Ventures and Apollo Capital also participated in the round.

The decentralized finance (DeFi) project, which just launched its testnet less than a month ago, is expected to launch on mainnet in September. 

As DeFi continues gaining traction, on-chain financial products that mirror those seen in traditional finance, from structured products to derivatives, are growing in popularity, but the options market has struggled to find traction. 

Lyra is integrated with Synthetix, a trading platform that also uses Optimism. The tie-up with Synthetix allows Lyra to hedge risk for liquidity providers. Risk management enables Lyra to keep fees low for traders.

“Options have been a core missing piece in the DeFi stack,” ParaFi Capital’s Santiago Roel Santos said in a statement. “Lyra’s novel on-chain pricing mechanism, Synthetix integration, and deployment on Optimism will introduce traders and liquidity providers to a scalable and capital-efficient options protocol.”

Lyra’s team plans to use the money from the seed round to hire additional engineers.