eToro leads $12.5M round for on-chain perpetuals exchange

Trading platform eToro led a $12.5 million strategic funding round in Extended, an on-chain exchange for perpetual futures, and tied the investment to a partnership with Zengo. Jump Crypto also participated in the round.

eToro announced the investment on Thursday, noting the companies will work together to expand access to global financial markets using on-chain infrastructure.

Extended began trading in late 2024. The exchange focuses on perpetual futures and is built on StarkWare’s StarkEx layer‑2 scaling engine. The platform was founded by former Revolut employees.

Zengo, founded in 2018, uses multi-party computation cryptography to remove the need for traditional seed phrases while offering token swaps, staking and access to decentralized applications. eToro has been integrating Zengo’s non-custodial wallet technology into its brokerage to connect customers with on-chain services.

In a post, eToro wrote: “The partnership will focus on expanding access to global financial markets through next-generation on-chain infrastructure. Together, we will explore opportunities to bridge traditional financial assets and decentralized trading environments.”

Perpetual futures are derivative contracts without an expiry date that let traders take leveraged long or short positions. Extended operates these contracts on-chain so settlement and trade records are recorded on a blockchain rather than handled only through off-chain order books and clearing. StarkEx aims to lower transaction costs and increase throughput by moving activity to a layer‑2 network.

When eToro bought Zengo earlier this year, Zengo's valuation was about $70 million. eToro reported crypto-related profit of $13 million in the first quarter of 2026, roughly 5% of its total net trading profit of $258 million, down from $46 million in the same quarter of 2025.