Written by: ChandlerZ, Foresight News
On July 10, stablecoin company Agora announced the completion of a $50 million Series A financing round, led by crypto venture capital firm Paradigm, with early investors such as Dragonfly continuing to participate. This round of financing comes just a 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 such as Tether and Circle, while Agora is still in its early stages, with a circulating market capitalization of its core product AUSD of approximately $160 million. Despite the concentration of the industry landscape and the gradual clarification of the regulatory environment, the issuance model proposed by the company still attracts capital attention. For institutions, in addition to factors such as product feasibility and service stability, the existence of new entry points for stablecoins has also become one of the key factors for assessment.
Overview of Agora
Agora was founded in 2023, headquartered in the United States, and focuses on providing stablecoin-related infrastructure. The first product, AUSD, adopts a 1:1 minting model, backed by cash, short-term U.S. Treasury bonds, and overnight repurchase agreements. The company's clients are enterprises and institutions, offering issuance, clearing, and custody capabilities for stablecoins, without directly targeting end users.
In terms of product strategy, Agora has established an issuance framework based on AUSD, allowing partners to issue their own branded stablecoins based on this framework. This approach avoids dependency on the Agora brand, allowing partners to retain profit distribution and operational control. Technically, AUSD supports deployment on mainstream chains such as Ethereum and Solana, with the contract layer implementing various functional expansions, including permission control, signature verification, and privacy transmission.
At the application service level, Agora provides an exchange channel between AUSD and mainstream stablecoins (USDC, USDT), opening a round-the-clock liquidity interface for some institutional clients. As of now, AUSD has over 8 million on-chain transactions, with a cumulative trading volume exceeding $12 billion, approximately 55,000 registered users, and over 100 cooperating institutions. Current circulation is mainly on-chain, with usage concentrated on certain decentralized trading platforms and payment scenarios.
From a market positioning perspective, Agora is closer to the Paxos model, focusing on institutional cooperation. However, unlike Paxos, which issues independent stablecoins for partners, Agora's partner products are all pegged to AUSD and share underlying liquidity. This approach maintains brand independence while also allowing for interchangeability of assets within the network, benefiting liquidity management and technical 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 current team size of the company is fewer than 10 people.
Nick van Eck previously served as a partner at General Catalyst, focusing on investment opportunities in enterprise software and crypto. He also worked at JMI Equity, participating in multiple large transaction projects, and graduated from the University of Virginia.
Drake Evans is responsible for technical architecture and contract development. Early in his career, he participated in the construction of modules related to Frax Finance, including Fraxlend, Fraxswap, and frxETH, with contract peak management assets exceeding $1 billion. He previously worked on payment system performance optimization at an ADP subsidiary, possessing relevant compliance system development experience.
Joe McGrady is responsible for the company's operations and was previously the global operations head at Galaxy Digital. He participated in transaction, lending, asset management, and infrastructure organization construction, and was also responsible for the onboarding process of projects such as Fireblocks. He held key positions at Ospraie Management and derivative company ParkRiver, working long-term in institutional due diligence and operations management.
Overall, the team members' backgrounds span venture capital, blockchain protocol development, and traditional financial operations, providing the foundational conditions for promoting 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, fund scheduling, 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 a third-party custodian, and featuring a certain level of transparency disclosure and audit arrangements. This asset structure can meet regulatory requirements for stablecoin products in some regions and reduce credit risk arising from opaque reserve assets.
The second product line is 'Instant Liquidity' services. Agora has built an exchange mechanism with stablecoins such as USDC and USDT, allowing institutional users to complete asset conversions across multiple chains with low latency. This function is provided through the Atlas interface, aiming to reduce usage friction caused by liquidity layering while improving the capital 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 also improves the overall network's adaptability and synergy.
Summary
In the context of the stablecoin market gradually maturing and user demands becoming increasingly differentiated, capital has begun to focus on the adjustment space for product models and service boundaries. The cooperative issuance structure adopted by Agora focuses on enterprise users and institutional scenarios, with relatively clear target points, reducing direct overlap with leading projects in the terminal market.
Current financing also indicates that the capital market remains interested in exploring such models, especially in the context of the gradually forming policy framework, where institutions are more inclined to focus on projects with compliance adaptability and expansion potential. For the stablecoin industry, Agora's attempts offer a potential path that balances standardization and customization, targeting institutions and relying on underlying networks, which may become a reference model in the future development of stablecoins.