Stablecoin startup Agora announces the completion of a $50 million Series A funding round, led by Paradigm with Dragonfly participating. These funds will be used to promote the global expansion and compliance layout of its core product AUSD.
This is not the first time Agora has attracted capital. As early as April 2024, the company completed a $12 million seed round led by Dragonfly. The two rounds of financing totaling $62 million have made Agora one of the few platform-type projects in the current stablecoin track that has received continuous backing from top institutions.
Who is Agora? What is its background?
Agora is a stablecoin startup founded in 2023 by three co-founders Nick van Eck, Drake Evans, and Joe McGrady, dedicated to creating a new platform-type stablecoin architecture, also known as a "white-label stablecoin".
Nick van Eck comes from a traditional financial background and is the son of Jan van Eck, founder of the well-known asset management company VanEck. Co-founder Drake Evans was a core engineer at MakerDAO, and Joe McGrady has engineering and operations experience in a Bridgewater-style institution.
Agora has completed two rounds of financing so far. In April 2024, Agora completed a $12 million seed round led by Dragonfly Capital, used to develop its core product AUSD and build a white-label issuance platform. In July 2025, Agora announced the completion of a $50 million Series A round led by Paradigm with Dragonfly participating, with funds to be used to accelerate global expansion and compliance layout. To date, Agora has raised a total of $62 million, becoming one of the few platform-type projects in the stablecoin track that has received continuous investment from top venture capital firms.
White-label stablecoin AUSD: A new story or old packaging?
Tether and Circle have long dominated the stablecoin market, with one relying on volume to reign in exchanges and the other focusing on compliance to connect with traditional finance. However, Agora does not intend to become "another USDT or USDC".
But beneath the surface, this landscape is being pried open by a startup called Agora.
Founded by Nick van Eck, son of the VanEck investment group founder, together with two crypto industry engineers, Agora is positioned differently from Tether and Circle. Instead of trying to create a "more compliant USDT" or a "more decentralized USDC", it has chosen a new platform-based path: creating infrastructure that everyone can use to issue their own stablecoin.
Its AUSD is a stablecoin pegged to the US dollar, backed by an asset pool managed by State Street Bank and VanEck. Unlike Tether and Circle's single coin distribution, Agora uses AUSD as a unified underlying clearing asset and offers white-label issuance services on this basis - any enterprise, whether a Web3 project or an overseas payment company, can quickly issue its own branded stablecoin, such as "GameUSD" or "ABC Pay Dollar", with all these coins sharing AUSD's on-chain liquidity and interchangeability.
This approach is somewhat similar to the early Paxos and PayPal collaboration in issuing PYUSD. However, unlike Paxos, which built an independent stablecoin system for partners, Agora's partners must directly build on top of AUSD. This unified underlying design makes the entire system easier to aggregate liquidity and more likely to generate network effects.
This platform-based issuance logic not only lowers the threshold for enterprise stablecoin issuance but also helps Agora establish stronger ecosystem stickiness and moat.
In terms of compliance and technical construction, Agora is not a typical startup. It maintains a high degree of connection with traditional finance: asset custody is handed over to State Street, asset management is handled by VanEck, and the custody technology has introduced Copper's MPC solution. At the same time, Agora is obtaining Money Transmission Licenses (MTL) in various US states to prepare for future entry into the US market.
In ecosystem cooperation, Agora has partnered with Polygon Labs to promote custom stablecoin issuance projects based on AUSD and has completed its first over-the-counter transaction with crypto asset management firm Galaxy. AUSD is currently listed on LBank with USDT trading pairs and has received support from projects like Injective, Flowdesk, Conduit, and Plume Network. On the chain, AUSD has been deployed across multiple chains including Ethereum, Sui, and Avalanche through Wormhole; Agora has also collaborated with Polygon's cross-chain aggregation protocol Agglayer, attempting to make AUSD its native stablecoin.
Data source: rwa.xyz
Currently, AUSD's total market value is still less than $200 million, far from USDT's $159.1 billion and USDC's $62 billion. However, in the view of top institutions like Paradigm and Dragonfly, Agora's platform logic may mean a structural reconstruction of the stablecoin market: stablecoins are no longer just products but can become platforms, allowing every institution to have its own on-chain dollar.
If the past stablecoin logic was "I'll issue one for you to use", Agora's logic is "I'll build a platform for you to issue". Tether and Circle are stablecoin "products", while Agora is more like the "AWS" of stablecoin issuance.
Data source: coingecko.com
Capturing the US market: What does obtaining multiple state Money Transmission Licenses (MTL) mean?
[The rest of the translation follows the same professional and accurate approach]
Reshaping the Distribution Logic of Stablecoins: Shifting from "I Issue Coins for You to Use" to "I Build the System for You to Issue," No Longer Just Creating a Stablecoin, but Providing the Capability to Issue Stablecoins, Enhancing Network Effects and Capital Efficiency.
Product Design Adapting to Regulatory Trends: Proactively Applying for MTL and Accessing Financial Regulatory Frameworks, Giving Agora a First-Mover Advantage in the Upcoming U.S. Regulatory Cycle.
Paradigm Partner Charlie Noyes Stated in an Interview: "Agora's Product is a Stablecoin System with a 'Built-in Battery,' Where Enterprises Can Immediately Launch Stablecoin Business without Hiring Ten Engineers."
