Cicada Secures $9.7m in Pre-Seed Capital Commitments

The non-custodial crypto lender will use the proceeds to launch multiple lending products in the coming months

BOSTON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Cicada Partners, a non-custodial credit risk management company bringing greater transparency and accountability to institutional lending over public blockchain infrastructure, announced a $9.7m funding round with equity and debt capital commitments led by Choppa Capital with participation from Bitscale, Bodhi Ventures, Shiliang Tang, and others. The investment will enable Cicada to seed multiple new non-custodial lending pools and fund research and development on new blockchain-enabled lending use cases.

Lars Rensing, Board Member of Cicada commented: “The recent funding round marks the start of an exciting chapter, enabling the team to focus on their ambitious goal of creating a fairer and more responsible DeFi lending landscape.

“As the negative headlines in 2023 have shown us, accountability is one of the biggest issues in the crypto lending space. Cicada’s suite of products will empower lenders, enabling them to engage in non-custodial lending while adhering to the highest standards of responsibility and trustworthiness. Looking ahead, the Cicada team envision these funds being used for R&D efforts to overcome wider market challenges surrounding transparency and inefficiency, while contributing to the growth of institutional lending on public blockchains.”

Following the demise of multiple centralized crypto lenders, and on the back of the founding team’s prior success in crypto lending, Cicada aims to build non-custodial credit products on top of the Cambrian explosion in blockchain-based credit origination protocols. The Company aims to bring responsible lending back to the decentralized finance space by leveraging smart contracts, its proprietary risk models, and the growth in stablecoin usage.

“These funds provide an invaluable launch pad to push DeFi credit origination back on the front foot, hopefully in a far more mature and sustainable manner going forward. While the prior crypto credit cycle ended in a lamentable situation for some lenders and the recovery will take time, we see a clear opportunity with respect to longer-term use cases for credit origination protocols. In particular, the material cost savings such platforms provide credit underwriters, borrowers, and lenders alike, provide an attractive model to disrupt the rapid growth in private credit,” Sefton Kincaid, Co-Founder & CEO.

About Cicada:
Cicada is an on-chain credit risk management company founded by a seasoned team of former buy- and sell-side credit professionals. Cicada’s co-founders have deep crypto lending expertise, having underwritten $850m in loans at a 1.2% default rate during the prior cycle. Created following the collapse of FTX, Cicada facilitates the growth of institutional lending on public blockchains by enabling lenders to participate in risk-managed non-custodial lending products.

Sefton Kincaid
Cicada Partners
Sefton@cicada.partners