Cascade Raises $15M To Bring 24/7 Perps Trading to Everything — Even Pre-IPO Stocks
What Is Cascade Building With Its New Funding?
Cascade has raised $15 million in viewd funding in a round co-led by Polychain and Variant, with support from Coinbase Ventures, Archetype and several other investors. The DeFi beginup has begun rolling out what it calls a “neo-brokerage,” a decentralized platform intended to host perpetual futures markets across a wide range of asset categories — from crypto to real-world commodities to tokenized shares of pre-IPO companies such as OpenAI, SpaceX and Stripe.
The protocol has reportedly been under development for more than two years. Its public reveal coincides with one of the busiest periods ever for decentralized derivatives venues. Perps DEXs including Hyperliquid, Aster and Lighter hit a combined $1.2 trillion in in October and posted almost the identical figure again in November, reflecting a rapid move toward 24/7 markets that do not rely on conventional brokerages.
The landscape is broadening well beyond crypto-native assets. Onchain platforms like Ostium now offer synthetic perpetuals tied to gold and even pork belly futures, while such as Kraken have enabled access to regulated commodity markets by tapping CME liquidity. Brokerages like Robinhood are working on one-stop offerings where users handle stocks, tokenized assets, in a single interface.
Investor Takeaway
How Is Cascade diverse From Existing Perps Platforms?
Cascade’s co-founder Kevin told The Block that the team is taking cues from omni-asset brokerages but intends to deliver it through a decentralized stack. The platform plans to let users own equities, trade crypto perps, borrow against portfolios and gain synthetic exposure to a range of markets inside one account, while keeping the interface familiar to users who prefer web2-style onboarding.
“Everything previously in the perps space has been very web3 focused, right?” Kevin said. “For us, we want to focus on providing a CEX-level experience that can onboard regular users.”
To support that approach, Cascade has integrated Stripe’s Bridge to enable direct bank connections for deposits and withdrawals. Kevin said the integration allows users to come in with Privy or Gmail login options, deposit fiat and immediately access markets. “The Bridge integration is the crucial part for us,” he added, noting that the setup has been in the works for several months.
The platform opened its vaults on Tuesday to gather pre-launch deposits and begin onboarding invited users. Cascade expects to go live on mainnet in Q1 2026 with roughly 10 perps markets, expanding coverage based on demand and using permissioned deployments similar to Ostium’s rollout.
How Will Cascade Handle Pricing, Matching and Liquidations?
Kevin said each market relies on its own pricing infrastructure, with documentation pointing to authenticated feeds from Stork for real-time oracle data. Liquidations will trigger based on those oracle prices, supported by Auto-Deleveraging (ADL) mechanisms that reduce positions if they fall below required margin levels.
According to the technical documentation, Cascade will use a non-custodial off-chain matcher for order routing and price discovery, allowing sub-second execution speeds. The onchain perps contract then settles trades and enforces outcomes. Kevin described the setup as using “traditional perps contracts” without direct exposure to the underlying assets.
Investor Takeaway
Where Is Cascade Trying to Take This Model?
The team’s longer-term plan is to build a unified account that handles trading, synthetic exposure and real-world spending. Although Cascade is still months away from launch, Kevin described a roadmap where users could route trading profits into everyday purchases.
“We’re going to be like a card issuer down the line as well,” Kevin said. “You can literally just spend the funds in your trading balance, so you’re not segregating this web3 and web2 experience — you can tie everything together.”
The vision pushes perps beyond speculation and into areas usually reserved for fintech apps and brokerages. If Cascade succeeds in linking fiat rails, tokenized assets and 24/7 synthetic markets under one interface, it could join a growing class of platforms trying to dissolve the boundary between onchain derivatives and traditional finance workflows.
Cascade announced its viewd round in ahead December with investment from , Variant, Coinbase Ventures, Archetype and others.
