Agora secures $50 million in financing, with the backdrop of the ongoing competition in the institutional stablecoin market.
Written by: ChandlerZ, Foresight News
On July 10, stablecoin company Agora announced the completion of a $50 million Series A financing round, led by cryptocurrency venture capital firm Paradigm, with early investors like Dragonfly continuing to participate. This round of financing occurred just one year after its seed round completed in 2024, which raised a total of $12 million, with investors including Foresight Ventures, Hack VC, and Galaxy Digital.
Currently, the stablecoin market is dominated by leading projects like Tether and Circle, while Agora is still in its early stages, with the circulating market value of its core product AUSD around 160 million U.S. dollars. Despite a concentrated industry landscape and a gradually clarified regulatory environment, the issuance model proposed by the company still attracts capital attention. For institutions, in addition to product viability and service stability, whether there are new ways to enter the stablecoin market has also become one of the key factors for evaluation.
Agora Overview
Agora was founded in 2023 and is headquartered in the United States, focusing on providing stablecoin-related infrastructure. Its first product, AUSD, adopts a 1:1 minting model, using cash, short-term U.S. Treasury bonds, and overnight repurchase agreements as reserve assets. The company serves enterprises and institutions, providing capabilities in stablecoin issuance, clearing, and custody, and does not directly target end users.
In terms of product strategy, Agora has established an issuance framework based on AUSD, allowing partners to issue their own brand stablecoins based on this framework. This model avoids dependence on the Agora brand, allowing partners to retain revenue distribution and operational control. Technically, AUSD supports deployment on mainstream chains like Ethereum and Solana, with the contract layer implementing various functional extensions, including permission control, signature verification, and privacy transmission.
At the service application layer, Agora provides an exchange channel between AUSD and mainstream stablecoins (USDC, USDT), opening a round-the-clock liquidity interface for certain institutional clients. As of now, the on-chain transaction count for AUSD has exceeded 8 million, with a cumulative trading volume of over 12 billion U.S. dollars, and approximately 55,000 registered users, with over 100 partner institutions. Current circulation is mainly on-chain, with usage concentrated in certain decentralized trading platforms and payment scenarios.
From a market positioning perspective, Agora is closer to the Paxos model, focusing on institutional collaboration. However, unlike Paxos, which issues independent stablecoins for partners, Agora's partners' products are all pegged to AUSD and share underlying liquidity. This approach maintains brand independence while also ensuring interchangeability of assets within the network, facilitating liquidity management and technological integration.
Team Background
Agora was co-founded by Nick van Eck, Drake Evans, and Joe McGrady, who serve as CEO, CTO, and COO, respectively. According to public information, the company currently has fewer than 10 team members.
Nick van Eck was a partner at General Catalyst, focusing on investment opportunities in enterprise software and cryptocurrency directions. He previously worked at JMI Equity and participated in several large transaction projects, graduating from the University of Virginia.
Drake Evans is responsible for technical architecture and contract development, having participated early on in the construction of modules related to Frax Finance, including projects like Fraxlend, Fraxswap, and frxETH, with peak managed assets exceeding 1 billion U.S. dollars. He has worked in a team under ADP focusing on payment system performance optimization and possesses experience in developing relevant compliance systems.
Joe McGrady is responsible for company operations. Before joining Agora, he was the global operations head at Galaxy Digital, where he participated in the organization of trading, lending, asset management, and infrastructure, also overseeing the integration processes for projects like Fireblocks. He has held key positions at Ospraie Management and derivatives firm ParkRiver, focusing on institutional due diligence and operational management.
Overall, the team members' backgrounds span venture capital, blockchain protocol development, and traditional financial operations, providing the foundational conditions to promote institutional-level products.
Product Layout: Three Main Strategic Lines
Agora currently builds its service system around three product lines, covering stablecoin issuance, liquidity management, and multi-chain network deployment, attempting to address core issues such as compliance transparency, capital mobilization, and cross-chain usage present in current stablecoin applications.
The first product line is the AUSD stablecoin itself, with asset reserves primarily consisting of short-term U.S. Treasury bonds and cash, regulated by third-party custodians, offering a certain level of transparency and audit arrangements. This asset structure can meet regulatory requirements for stablecoin products in certain regions and reduce credit risks associated with opaque reserve assets.
The second product line is the 'Instant Liquidity' service. Agora has established an exchange mechanism with stablecoins like USDC and USDT, allowing institutional users to complete asset conversions on multiple chains with low latency. This function is provided through the Atlas interface, aiming to reduce the usage friction caused by liquidity stratification while enhancing the capital utilization efficiency of cross-chain assets.
The third product line is the stablecoin issuance network and white-label platform. Agora supports multi-chain deployment and can bridge partner products to centralized and decentralized trading platforms. Corporate clients can issue localized stablecoins based on their needs, with the system providing corresponding clearing, custody, and brand support capabilities. This platform structure enhances partner autonomy and increases the adaptability and synergy of the overall network.
Summary
Against the backdrop of a gradually maturing stablecoin market and increasingly differentiated user needs, capital has begun to pay attention to the adjustment space of product models and service boundaries. The collaborative issuance structure adopted by Agora focuses on corporate users and institutional scenarios, with a relatively clear focus, reducing direct overlap with leading projects in the end market.
The current financing also indicates that the capital market remains interested in exploring such models, especially as the policy framework gradually takes shape, institutions are more inclined to focus on projects with compliance adaptability and expansion potential. For the stablecoin industry, Agora's attempt offers a potential path that balances standardization and customization, aiming at institutions and relying on underlying networks, which may become a reference model in the future development of stablecoins.
