Cycles raises $6.4M for multilateral clearing

Cycles, the crypto startup founded by Cosmos co-founder Ethan Buchman, secured $6.4 million in a Series A round led by Blockchange Ventures, with participation from Coinbase Ventures, Compound VC, Primitive Ventures and angel investors. The funding brings Cycles’ total to $8.7 million after a $2.3 million pre-seed round in May 2025 co-led by CMCC Global and Maven 11.

The company is building an open multilateral clearing protocol that offsets many parties’ mutual obligations so fewer funds move to settle transactions. The protocol aims to perform a function similar to a traditional clearing house but on blockchain networks and for a broader set of participants.

Cycles’ design combines cryptographic zero-knowledge proofs, hardware-based trusted execution environments (TEEs) and graph algorithms to map and compress webs of obligations. The goal is to identify the largest set of transactions that can be cleared with the least capital by computing net positions across many counterparties.

The Series A capital will support product development, security audits and pilot programs. Cycles plans to expand its engineering team and run pilot testing with institutional partners as it moves from private beta to wider availability.

Cycles is launching a pilot called Cycles Prime that will test the system with market makers, prime brokers, exchanges and up to 10 tier-one trading firms. Lynq and FalconX are listed as anchor partners in the program.

Ethan Buchman described the project’s aim as “to build a universal capital-efficient payments and finance engine to allow everyone to do more with less,” and cited historical clearing practices, such as those used by Medici Bank in the 15th century, as an influence on the design.

Matt Lepow, FalconX’s head of product, described the partnership by saying, “Legacy settlement rails weren't built for today’s 24/7 global markets. We support Cycles' mission to create a unified clearing layer for onchain finance. As a pilot partner for Cycles Prime, FalconX is proud to contribute to a more capital-efficient method for institutions to manage short-term obligations.”

Alongside the clearing protocol, Cycles is launching a stablecoin called Cycles Pay. The company plans to integrate the stablecoin with the clearing engine so participants can use a native settlement asset within the netting system.

The protocol’s use of zero-knowledge proofs and TEEs is intended to allow the system to compute complex offsetting arrangements while preserving transaction privacy and system security. Cycles will refine its clearing algorithms and increase partner testing as it prepares for broader rollout.