YZi Labs backs Genius Trading with multi-8-figure round as CZ signs on as advisor

A new funding round is propelling the growth of Genius Trading in the race to build institutional-grade, onchain trading infrastructure that can rival centralized exchanges.

YZi Labs invests multi-8-figure sum with CZ as advisor

YZi Labs, the family office of Binance co-founders Changpeng “CZ” Zhao and Yi He, has made a “multi-8-figure” investment in Genius Trading, with CZ also joining the startup as an advisor.

The investment, completed last month, comes from the entity that spun out of Binance Labs and signals a long-term bet on an onchain trading stack that can compete with the world’s largest exchanges. However, the parties have not disclosed a detailed valuation.

Genius is building a privacy-focused, decentralized trading platform that offers spot, perpetual futures, and copy trading through a self-custodial, cross-chain trading terminal. Moreover, the startup explicitly aims to position itself as an onchain alternative to Binance.

“If you were rebuilding Binance today, you would not do it as a centralized exchange 9you would build it onchain,” said Ryan Myher, co-founder and COO of Genius Trading. “Genius is our answer to what that looks like: one terminal, full custody, no compromises.”

Deal size, structure and token plans

Co-founder and CEO Armaan Kalsi said the “multi-8-figure” ticket from YZi Labs is well above $10 million. However, he declined to reveal the exact size or structure of the deal, including how much is equity or tokens, or whether there is a mix of both.

Kalsi also declined to comment on whether Genius plans to issue a native token, a common route for DeFi trading projects. That said, the scale of this latest round places the company in a different bracket from its earlier capital raises.

Before this investment, Genius had secured a total of $7 million in funding, including a $6 million round in 2024 and a $1 million extension. That round was led by CMCC, with participation from Balaji Srinivasan, Anthony Scaramucci, Flow Traders and other backers.

What Genius Trading is building

Genius Trading is positioning itself as a unified, self-custodial trading terminal that aggregates liquidity across more than 10 blockchains. Supported networks include BNB Chain, Solana, Ethereum, Hyperliquid, Base, Avalanche, and Sui.

Through this design, users can trade without manually bridging assets or switching between wallets while avoiding publicly signaling their strategies onchain. Moreover, the platform offers spot, perpetuals, and decentralized copy trading tools in a single interface intended to feel similar to a centralized exchange.

“We are building a privacy-specific trading suite that is still in beta,” Kalsi told The Block. “We are taking our time. Our bet is that the current degeneracy meta in crypto is a great way to acquire users (speculation), but that once they realize the power of the underlying technology, they will want to stay.”

According to Kalsi, once traders shift from pure speculation to building longer-term financial activity, privacy and self-custody will become non-negotiable features for any serious trading genius product.

Early usage and technical stack

Since its “soft” launch in October 2024, Genius says it has processed more than $60 million in trading volume. Usage so far is concentrated among onchain whales that manage millions of dollars in monthly activity, underscoring the institutional tilt of the product.

Behind the interface, the platform uses a custom multi-party computation (MPC) wallet, proprietary cross-chain routing logic, and direct integrations with decentralized exchanges. However, Kalsi said Genius has no plans to launch a dedicated blockchain and instead intends to integrate only with existing chains and DeFi protocols.

That said, the team is working to keep the user experience as close as possible to a centralized venue while retaining self-custody. This mirrors broader market demand for a self custodial trading platform that does not sacrifice execution quality.

Privacy layer and roadmap

A core pillar of the project is a privacy focused trading layer designed to shield large onchain strategies from surveillance. The system, currently in beta, enables users to split a single transaction into “hundreds of wallets” to reduce traceability while keeping all activity onchain.

Genius says the design avoids offchain components and does not rely on zero-knowledge systems that can introduce execution delays. Moreover, the company plans a privacy protocol public beta in the second quarter of 2026, opening the mechanism to a wider set of users.

The longer-term privacy push reflects the founders’ view of how onchain adoption will evolve. Kalsi described the current “terminal wars” as a fiercely competitive phase among trading platforms such as Axiom, GMGN, Photon, and Padre, which have been battling over customer acquisition costs and dense feature sets.

While speculative activity has helped drive overall crypto user growth, Kalsi believes the primary_keyword will need to double down on its privacy stack as traders shift to building lasting portfolios and more structured financial lives onchain.

Origins, team and hiring plans

Genius, built by Shuttle Labs, was founded in 2022 when the core team was still in college at Yale University, according to Kalsi. The project initially started as a block data legibility and explorer tool before evolving into a full-featured trading platform.

He noted that the same core team has continued building together since inception. Alongside Kalsi and Myher, the third co-founder is CTO Brihu Sundararaman, who leads the technical architecture and privacy roadmap.

The company is headquartered in New York City and operates with a globally distributed team of 11 people. However, Kalsi said the startup will hire cautiously, potentially adding only two to four additional employees over the near term.

So, Genius aims to combine a unified, institutional-grade terminal, deep cross-chain liquidity, and advanced privacy tooling to challenge centralized exchanges from the onchain side, with fresh capital from YZi Labs and CZ’s guidance accelerating that effort.