RiskLayer has closed a Builders round of pre-seed funding for an undisclosed amount. The round was co-led by global venture capital firms Antler and Momentum6, with additional support from notable angel investors including Wagmi Ventures, Hypotenuse Ventures, Richard Ma (founder of Zircuit), Ishaan Hiranandani (Head of Strategy at Eigenlayer), Agnish Ghosh (EthNimbus Core), Alex (FranklinDAO Core Contributor), and Paul Taylor (formerly of Blackrock).
RiskLayer, developed by Chainrisk Labs, is an economic risk management protocol that has already made significant progress by powering notable DeFi protocols such as Compound, Angle Labs, Gyroscope, Ebisu Finance, and an ecosystem including Arbitrum and Fuel Network. The company is now positioned to leverage Actively Validated Services (AVS) on EigenLayer to solve key economic security issues in DeFi, and to capture significant institutional opportunities in the crypto space.
The company’s innovative approach involves deploying two separate AVSs: Risk Oracle AVS, which acts as a comprehensive data provider for DeFi risks, and Risk Rollup AVS, which meets the application-specific requirements of EigenLayer.
Risk Oracle AVS leverages “Proof of Risk” consensus to index user risk across multiple markets and assets, enabling investors to deploy capital with optimal risk efficiency. Risk Rollup AVS aims to facilitate the development of new structured finance products that are inherently risk-aware by securing application-specific rollups in RiskLayer.
Sudhipan Sinha, RiskLayer core contributor and Chainrisk Labs CEO, emphasized the importance of extending economic security from the protocol level to the application layer, making risk-optimized strategies more accessible and efficient for both institutions and DeFi users.
“Economic security is what EigenLayer is solving at the network level. At RiskLayer, we abstract economic security from the protocol layer and extend it to the application layer. Institutions and users in DeFi have always struggled to figure out risk optimization strategies. RiskLayer is taking steps at a time to make that onboarding experience trustless and highly efficient,” said Sinha.
RiskLayer will use these funds to accelerate the development of AVS infrastructure and prepare for the upcoming pre-staking launch.
Nitin Sharma, Antler’s Web3 Partner and Global Co-Head, expressed confidence in RiskLayer’s trajectory, citing the team’s deep research and thought leadership on economic security. “We are excited about the momentum Chainrisk Labs has rapidly built to emerge as one of the most promising Web3 projects globally when it comes to economic security,” Sharma said.
“The team has been focused on navigating complex spaces and solving multi-billion dollar problems in securing the Web3 economy through close relationships with the Eigen ecosystem,” said Nilotpal Mukherjee, Symbiote Founder and Momentum6 General Partner.