Agora Raises $50 Million in Funding, Amid the Unfinished 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 funding round, led by crypto venture capital firm Paradigm, with early investors like Dragonfly continuing to participate. This funding round comes just one year after its seed round in 2024, which raised $12 million, with investors including Foresight Ventures, Hack VC, and Galaxy Digital.
Currently, the stablecoin market is largely dominated by leading projects like Tether and Circle, with Agora still in its early stages and its core product AUSD having a circulating market value of around $160 million. Despite the concentrated industry landscape and gradually clarifying regulatory environment, the company's issuance model continues to attract capital attention. For institutions, in addition to factors such as product feasibility and service stability, whether there are new ways to enter the stablecoin market has become a key assessment criterion.
Agora Overview
Founded in 2023 and headquartered in the United States, Agora focuses on providing stablecoin-related infrastructure. Its first product, AUSD, uses a 1:1 minting model, with cash, short-term US Treasury bonds, and overnight repurchase agreements as reserve assets. The company serves enterprises and institutions, providing stablecoin issuance, clearing, and custody capabilities, without directly facing end users.
In terms of product strategy, Agora has established an issuance framework based on AUSD, allowing partners to issue their own branded stablecoins. This approach avoids dependence on the Agora brand, with partners retaining revenue distribution and operational control. Technically, AUSD supports deployment on mainstream chains like Ethereum and Solana, with contract-level functionality extensions including permission control, signature verification, and privacy transmission.
In the service application layer, Agora provides exchange channels between AUSD and mainstream stablecoins (USDC, USDT), offering 24/7 liquidity interfaces for some institutional clients. To date, AUSD has over 8 million on-chain transactions, with a cumulative trading volume exceeding $12 billion, approximately 55,000 registered users, and over 100 partner institutions. Currently, circulation is primarily on-chain, mainly used in certain decentralized exchanges and payment scenarios.
From a market positioning perspective, Agora is closer to the Paxos model, focusing on institutional collaboration. However, unlike Paxos issuing independent stablecoins for partners, Agora's partner products are all pegged to AUSD and share underlying liquidity. This approach maintains brand independence while making assets within the network interchangeable, facilitating liquidity management and technical integration.
Team Background
Agora was co-founded by Nick van Eck, Drake Evans, and Joe McGrady, serving as CEO, CTO, and COO respectively. According to public information, the company currently has fewer than 10 team members.
Nick van Eck was previously a partner at General Catalyst, long focusing on investment opportunities in enterprise software and crypto, and had previously worked at JMI Equity, participating in multiple large-scale transaction projects, graduating from the University of Virginia.
Drake Evans is responsible for technical architecture and contract development, having early involvement in Frax Finance modules, including Fraxlend, Fraxswap, and frxETH, with peak contract asset management exceeding $1 billion. He previously worked on payment system performance optimization in an ADP team, with experience in developing compliance systems.
Joe McGrady oversees company operations, previously serving as Global Operations Head at Galaxy Digital, involved in organizing trading, lending, asset management, and infrastructure, and responsible for interfacing with projects like Fireblocks. He held key positions at Ospraie Management and its derivative company ParkRiver, long engaged in institutional due diligence and operational management.
Overall, team members have backgrounds spanning venture capital, blockchain protocol development, and traditional financial operations, providing a foundation for driving institutional-level products.
Product Layout: Three-Pronged Strategy
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 in current stablecoin applications such as compliance transparency, fund allocation, and cross-chain usage.
The first product line is the AUSD stablecoin itself, with asset reserves primarily consisting of short-term US Treasury bonds and cash, monitored by third-party custodial institutions, with certain transparency and audit arrangements. This asset structure can meet regulatory requirements in some regions and reduce credit risks associated with opaque reserve assets.
The second product line is "Instant Liquidity" service. Agora has established an exchange mechanism with stablecoins like USDC and USDT, allowing institutional users to complete asset conversions across multiple chains with low latency. This functionality is provided through the Atlas interface, aiming to reduce usage friction from liquidity layering and improve 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 exchanges. Enterprise clients can issue localized stablecoins based on their needs, with the system providing corresponding clearing, custody, and brand support capabilities. This platform-like structure enhances partner autonomy and increases the network's adaptability and synergy.
Summary
In the context of a gradually maturing stablecoin market with increasingly diversified user needs, capital has begun to focus on the potential for adjusting product models and service boundaries. Agora's collaborative issuance structure, with a focus on enterprise users and institutional scenarios, has a relatively clear positioning, reducing direct competition with leading projects in the terminal market.
The current funding also indicates that the capital market still maintains interest in exploring such models, especially as policy frameworks gradually take shape, with institutions more inclined to focus on projects with regulatory adaptability and expansion potential. For the stablecoin industry, Agora's attempt provides a possible path that balances standardization and customization, with an institution-facing, network-based approach that may become a reference sample for future stablecoin development.
