Kuru Labs, a decentralized exchange startup on the Ethereum-compatible Monad blockchain, recently secured an impressive $11.6 million Series A funding round led by Paradigm. This investment, following a $2 million seed round last year, will propel Kuru Labs towards its ambitious goal of creating the first fully functional on-chain central limit orderbook for the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM). With notable angel investors like Viktor Bunin and former FTX product lead Tristan Yver also participating in the funding round, there is a strong industry backing for Kuru’s innovative approach.
The primary focus of the $11.6 million capital injection will be on expanding Kuru Labs’ engineering team and deploying its hybrid orderbook model on Monad’s upcoming mainnet. Unlike the prevalent automated market maker (AMM) based decentralized exchanges, Kuru’s architecture combines a central limit orderbook with an automated market maker as a fallback option. This unique structure is designed to offer tighter spreads while maintaining liquidity levels, addressing some of the inefficiencies associated with traditional AMMs. Additionally, Kuru’s platform serves as a comprehensive liquidity hub, encompassing a discovery terminal, token launchpad, and tools for both active and passive liquidity provision.
The overarching goal of Kuru Labs is to streamline the decentralized finance (DeFi) trading stack into a unified interface, a feat that traditional DEXs have struggled to achieve. By challenging the dominant AMM model in DeFi, Kuru Labs aims to leverage Monad’s technical capabilities, such as 10,000 transactions per second and one-second block finality, to support a fully functional on-chain central limit orderbook. This move is crucial as existing EVM chains like Ethereum and Arbitrum face limitations in supporting orderbook functionality due to high gas fees and slow block times.
With its innovative approach and reliance on Monad’s advanced technical infrastructure, Kuru Labs is positioned to redefine the trading infrastructure in DeFi. By offering price precision, deeper liquidity, and a seamless user experience, Kuru’s on-chain central limit orderbook could potentially compete with centralized exchanges and pave the way for a post-AMM future in decentralized trading. As the team prepares for the mainnet launch and further development of the decentralized liquidity hub on Monad, industry observers are eager to see how this bold experiment unfolds.