YZi Labs has placed a strategic bet on Genius, a platform building a private, high-velocity on-chain trading terminal for professional traders. The investment aims to solve DeFi's fragmentation problem while delivering CEX-level speed, liquidity, and discretion — all without forcing users to surrender custody of their assets.
Multi-Chain Aggregation Meets Order Privacy
Genius currently supports eight major networks, including BNB Chain, Solana, and Ethereum, with plans to expand to ten. For large traders, the biggest pain point is front-running or slippage exposure. Genius tackles this with its proprietary “Ghost Orders”, leveraging Multi-Party Computation (MPC) to orchestrate ephemeral wallet clusters on-chain. This allows big positions to execute across hundreds of addresses without revealing the funding link to the public. The entire process remains non-custodial — private keys stay with the user — proving that privacy and execution speed can coexist.
Armaan Kalsi, co-founder and CEO of Genius, framed the investment as a matter of alignment: “Working with YZi Labs means we have the industry’s most thorough and well-resourced backer taking a meaningful swing at creating an ‘on-chain’ Binance, while focusing on what makes CEXs better than DEXs right now: privacy.” He sees Genius as a central hub for sophisticated traders in a fragmented DeFi landscape.
Founder Meets Backer
Ella Zhang, head of YZi Labs, recalled meeting Kalsi at the NYC Builder Bunker during a BNB Chain MVB demo. “He has the distinct energy of a founder who’s going to win: sharp, articulate, and relentless. Even as a student building complex trading infrastructure, he had already secured an angel round from high-profile investors. I pulled him aside after his demo — and I knew we had to be part of his journey.”
Alex Odagiu, Investment Partner at YZi Labs, added that DeFi has long been fragmented and complex. By unifying liquidity and prioritizing privacy and high-velocity execution, Genius is well positioned to become a powerful “command center” for the next generation of institutional and power users.
The project plans a late-2026 open-access launch, offering an execution platform that merges the best of CEX efficiency with decentralized ownership. As DeFi evolves, Genius could redefine how professional traders navigate on-chain markets.