Centralized Exchanges (CEXs) that trade cryptocurrencies have been under fire ever since the FTX fallout. This led to a surge in interest in Decentralised Exchanges (DEXs) for traders seeking some safeguards for their portfolios. Yet these DEXs remain cumbersome for users to execute trades and manage profitability. Innovating the decentralised finance space, Brine Fi is today announcing a $16.5m series.  A funding round having launched its order book platform just weeks ago that is already running monthly volumes of $300m, becoming the top-ranked DEX globally. 

The funding round was led by Pantera Capital with participation from Elevation Capital, Starkware Ltd, Spartan Group, Goodwater Capital, Upsparks Ventures, Protofund Ventures and angel investors. 

Brine Fi is an order book spot DEX and has set out to address the shortcomings being faced by crypto traders when trading. A DEX allows users to trade on-chain i.e. traders can get their orders executed on the blockchain and hold full custody of their assets with them while placing these trades. While they are the safest way to trade, many traders opted for a CEX to counter higher trading fees on DEXs, price slippage, transaction fees ($5-25 per transaction), liquidity issues, the absence of an order book, transaction delays and an inability to provide privacy on orders causing frontrunning attacks. These issues can impact profit margins and substantially increase the uncertainty of specific trades. 

The crypto market is known best for its volatility which creates opportunities for traders but all too often the trading engines of DEX can’t keep up and fail to execute orders instantaneously, which leads to price slippage. Brine Fi is able to execute orders in milliseconds while remaining fully non-custodial and this feature has helped them onboard some of the largest hedge funds, exchanges and high-frequency traders in the world by helping them diversify their asset allocation and mitigate counterparty risks. 

Brine Fi also solves another common issue prevailing in DEXs called frontrunning, wherein a user places an order of a huge value on a DEX, it becomes public to everyone and this information can be used by anyone by getting their order executed first at a better price, which might lead to the previous order not being executed. To tackle this issue, Brine Fi makes use of zkP (Zero Knowledge Proofs) technology, powered by StarkWare, which enables privacy on trading positions, so that traders can get their high-volume orders executed with ease. Moreover, users can trade gasless and pay a trading fee as small as 0.05%. Users can also claim up to 50% of their referrals’ trading fees as a rebate on Brine Fi. Moreover, with the launch of Brine Fi’s Trading Leaderboard, top traders can now claim USDC rewards every month. 

Shaaran Lakshminarayanan, co-founder and CEO at Brine Fi commented: “Having built one of the largest crypto exchanges previously, we have had to diversify users' assets constantly in multiple exchanges and venues to reduce asset loss risk due to troubled exchanges/parties, with Brine Fi we make it easy for institutions, centralised exchanges, HFT traders and retail users to reduce their counterparty risk and at the same time get the best price for their orders in the industry”. 

The Brine Fi team includes former execs from CoinBase, PayPal, Venmo, Flipkart, Harvard, and MIT and are on a mission to deliver the best DEX experience possible to traders and institutions alike. Brine Fi was founded by university friends Bhavesh Praveen, Ritumbhara Bhatnagar and Shaaran Lakshminarayanan. 

Paul Veradittakit, ( Managing Partner at Pantera Capital ) commented: “Brine tackles some of the most important challenges holding back institutional and mainstream user adoption in DeFi. There's an urgent demand for a self-custodial execution layer that is faster, more reliable, user-friendly, and cost-effective.”

Vaas Bhaskar, ( Principal at Elevation Capital )  commented: “We have seen Shaaran and team since Day One at Brine. The team brings together a unique blend of understanding both, complex technologies and evolving user needs. We are excited to continue to invest in Brine, in their mission of abstracting complexities of blockchain technology and making it more accessible to end users and institutions.”