City Protocol, an infrastructure provider focused on on-chain structured products, said it has completed seed and pre-Series A funding rounds totaling $11 million. Investors listed in the announcement include Dragonfly, Jump Crypto, CMT Digital, Stratified Capital, Adaverse and Mirana.
The project says it is building an integrated infrastructure stack for the issuance, operation and access of structured products on-chain. Its flagship product, Venzo, is the platform built on top of that stack.
Three reusable layers for on-chain structured products
In its description of the market, City Protocol said launching a structured product in traditional finance typically requires coordination across issuers, custodians, valuation agents, operating teams and distribution channels. That process can be slow and costly, leaving smaller asset managers with limited room to participate. On-chain, the problem shifts form: strategy logic, vault contracts, accounting systems and distribution channels are often fragmented, which means issuers rebuild core tooling for each product.
City Protocol says it breaks that process into three standardized modules that teams can reuse when issuing and operating products:
- Tokenization: turns a strategy set or asset class into a verifiable, distributable on-chain product.
- Vault: uses audited standard contracts to manage fund flows, execution boundaries, accounting and exits.
- Issuance & Operation: uses product templates to cover the full lifecycle from launch to maturity.
On security, the company said product permissions are split among different roles, key actions require multiple signatures, fee rules are written into smart contracts so users can review them before acting, and position and execution records remain on-chain and tamper-resistant.
Venzo has four live strategy vaults and $30 million in TVL
Venzo is the flagship product built on City Protocol’s infrastructure and serves as an access point for verified on-chain investment products. The platform currently has four strategy vaults live and $30 million in total value locked. It is deployed on EVM-compatible networks and uses chain abstraction to provide what the project describes as a unified experience.
On the yield side, Venzo connects with yield and strategy providers, while trade execution and lending are routed to major decentralized protocols. For developers, City Protocol offers an SDK and portfolio data query interfaces, which it says allow partners to complete front-end integration for vault products within days.
Venzo’s product lineup is split into two categories, both aimed at packaging higher-barrier investment capabilities into products that retail users can access directly:
- Strategy vaults, already live: these bring strategies that were previously aimed mainly at institutions and professional investors on-chain, including quantitative hedging, cross-exchange arbitrage, private credit and on-chain yield strategies. After subscription, the strategy provider operates within an authorized scope. Products are accounted for on a net asset value, or NAV, basis and exited through redemption windows.
- Thematic portfolios, coming soon: these package an investment theme into a rules-based basket. User assets remain in their own wallets throughout the process, while automated programs handle purchases and later rebalancing based on public portfolio rules. Funds are not pooled and there is no NAV accounting. Users hold the underlying assets themselves rather than share certificates, and can manage those positions at any time.
Two thematic portfolio formats are planned
City Protocol said thematic portfolios will be launched in two formats:
- Person-tracking portfolios: baskets built from legally disclosed holdings of well-known investors, institutions and public officials, updated under preset rules when new disclosures appear.
- Sector-themed portfolios: baskets built around industrial themes such as space, metals and electric vehicles.
The project said basket construction rules and rebalance timing for both formats will be disclosed in advance.
Polis points campaign is underway
On the community side, Venzo is running its first-season Polis points campaign. Users can accumulate Polis points by holding positions in eligible vaults. The system also includes multiple multipliers, including vault coefficients, position coefficients, genesis bonuses and loyalty bonuses, and it supports an invitation mechanism.
According to the announcement, the second season of the Polis campaign will begin immediately after the first season ends.
Backers and ecosystem figures
The funding round brought in Dragonfly, Jump Crypto, CMT Digital, Stratified Capital, Adaverse and Mirana, among others. City Protocol said those participants span crypto-native funds, market-making and trading firms, and ecosystem funds.
The team also disclosed ecosystem figures of more than 51,000 verified City ID users and more than 9,400 ecosystem NFT holders.
How the team frames its broader goal
City Protocol said that over the past decade, on-chain finance has largely addressed how assets move, while the next decade should address how investment capabilities are distributed. In the team’s framing, quantitative hedging, cross-market arbitrage and private credit have long been limited by minimum subscription sizes, channel access and geography.
The company describes its broader direction as Neofinance. It says standardized and modular product structures could let strategy teams issue products directly, while allowing ordinary users to access those products through a simpler interface.
About City Protocol
According to the project description, City Protocol is an open infrastructure stack built for Neofinance. It starts with structured products and uses tokenization, vault, and issuance-and-operations layers so that asset managers, strategy providers and platforms do not need to build the same issuance, operations and distribution systems from scratch. Its flagship product, Venzo, offers strategy vaults and thematic portfolios to end users.
Website: https://www.cityprotocol.co
Docs: https://city-protocol.gitbook.io/docs
Venzo: https://app.venzofinance.com
