Kado, a startup building stablecoin payments infrastructure for Web3 announced today that it has raised $5.4 million in seed round financing led by Hashed. Strategic investors that also participated include Race Capital, Collab+Currency, Circle Ventures, Republic Capital, PrimeBlock Ventures, T&G Ventures, Skyvision Capital, Lunatic Capital, Contango Digital, 0xVentures, TPS Capital, Richard Dai, Smart Stake, Jason Yanowitz, and a few more select angel investors.

The combined circulating supply of stablecoins grew over 220% in the last year to over 175bn in March 2022. With support from the two fastest growing stablecoin ecosystems, Terra (UST) and Circle (USDC), Kado is strongly positioned to grow as the stablecoin market continues to see exponential adoption. Kado will use this round of funding to integrate into new payment rails, drive new stablecoin and blockchain integrations, and launch their B2B2C merchant and business solutions.

The team formed during a Terra community hackathon in May 2021 and has grown to over 10 full-time members. A much anticipated project within the Terra ecosystem, and working closely with Terraform Labs since inception, Kado was one of the first teams to start building on the Terra blockchain. “We saw the success Chai and Terra had with real-world stablecoin payments and quickly wanted similar solutions in our personal lives. We found a few products in practice, but most want you to pay with Bitcoin or Ethereum, which when compared to stablecoins aren’t the optimal medium for exchange – for both parties,” noted Kado co-founder Emery Andrew.

Kado’s focus is on delivering products that create utility for stablecoins, notably delivering Kado Pay in November 2021. Kado Pay is a website where crypto natives can shop for millions of products directly with their DeFi wallets. Using a low fee, high speed blockchain, Terra, users tout the product as the most seamless way to shop online with stablecoins. Soon, Solana USDC will be integrated along with Phantom wallet, opening Kado Pay to the multi-chain universe. Kado Pay is excited to build upon this offering by offering B2B and merchant solutions, including multi-chain stablecoin payment API’s and SDK’s.

The most recent and highly anticipated launch for Kado directly plays into their thesis of increasing stablecoin adoption. Kado Ramp is the fastest and easiest way to swap between fiat dollars and stablecoins. Users connect their bank account, credit or debit cards to directly purchase stablecoins, which are instantly settled and linked to a user’s self-custody wallet of choice. The Terra community is excited that Kado Ramp has already begun to decrease the friction that is currently associated with acquiring Terra’s native stablecoin, UST. In their first week, Kado processed north of $1m in stablecoin transactions. Off-ramp features are set to launch later in Q2.

In an arms race to provide users with more stablecoin utility, Kado has proven themselves to be a team producing results. Emery describes Kado’s ultimate vision as “payments infrastructure for Web3 and the future of digital money,” he continues, “we’re excited to enable simple, frictionless access to and utility for stablecoins.” The blockchain payments use-cases have started to come to light, notably with the launch of Solana Pay in early February 2022.

“As an early-backer of Terra Money and Chai, we’ve witnessed the power of decentralized money’s utility in our daily lives. Kado will be supercharging the mass adoption of Web3 by offering frictionless on-ramp, payment, and commerce experiences for consumers globally,” said Baek Kim, a General Partner of Hashed.

Kado has plans to expand their services cross-chain. The team is betting big on a multichain future and they see stablecoins as the medium of exchange that will connect user experiences across various leading blockchains. Kado is eyeing deployment across Solana, Avalanche, and several other blockchains in the near future.

“According to J.P. Morgan, the eCommerce market is valued at $744 billion today, and stablecoins will materially eat into this market,” said Chris McCann, a General Partner of Race Capital. “I believe Kado will play a very important role and become the go to on-ramp and off-ramp payment infrastructure for consumers, merchants, and the emerging payment ecosystem around Terra & Solana. Kado will enable many more real world use cases for both UST and USDC in the ecosystem.”

“There’s still such a wide gap, in education and tooling, for merchants and businesses looking to benefit from blockchain technology, and specifically DeFi. Conversely, blockchain projects like wallets, NFT marketplaces, games, and other blockchain applications are calling for more simple on-ramp and off-ramp integrations, and easier access to their products,” notes Kado co-founder Vince Dowdle. “We’re excited to be building upon key money legos and closing the loop between TradFi and DeFi.”

About Kado

Kado is building premier payments infrastructure for stablecoins and web3 worldwide, including Kado Ramp, Kado Pay, and Kado Save. Learn more at https://www.kado.money/.

About Hashed

Hashed is a global, multi-billion venture fund focused on backing founders pioneering the future of blockchain and cryptocurrency. Led by serial entrepreneurs and engineers, Hashed is expediting global blockchain adoption through strategic investments and community building. Based in Seoul, San Francisco, Singapore, and Bangalore.

About Race Capital

Race Capital invests, builds, and partners with exceptional founders building market-transforming companies. We work side by side with our founders as early as possible, every step of the way. We have successfully built our own companies from small to big, from nothing to IPO, and we want to help you to do the same. Race’s portfolio includes Solana, FTX, Databricks, Lighting Labs, now Kado and many more.

About Collab+Currency

Collab+Currency is a thesis-driven venture fund focusing exclusively on web3. We back early-stage projects building the next generation of financial infrastructure, culture, and human organization.

About Republic Capital

Republic Capital is a multi-stage venture capital firm focused on accelerating disruptive innovations. We select investments based on business fundamentals with a focus on unit economics, strategy and the opportunity to disrupt a market. We believe that the intersection of science, finance and web3 are changing capital markets and bringing frontier technology to the forefront. Republic Capital’s crypto portfolio includes Avalanche, Terra, Polygon, 1inch Network, and more.

About SkyVision Capital

SkyVision Capital (SVC) is a venture capital fund founded with the mission of promoting innovative decentralized technology and facilitating its adoption in mainstream communities. The SVC team is an early stage investor and strategic adviser of cryptocurrency projects that aim to revolutionize and fundamentally enhance markets across the DeFi, GameFi and Infrastructure layer, across the Terra, Solana and Secret Network ecosystem.

Media Contact
Company Name: Kado
Contact Person: Emery Andrew, CEO
Email: Send Email
Country: United States
Website: https://kado.money/