Panther Hollow launches merchant bank for compliant RWA yield

Panther Hollow Ventures, based in the New York metropolitan area, launched a multi-strategy merchant bank to invest in compliant real‑world-asset (RWA) private credit and institutional-grade decentralized finance yield strategies across Ethereum, Solana, Canton and StarkNet.

The firm was founded by former crypto attorneys Eric Swartz and Jacqueline Escobar. It combines pre-seed venture capital, a liquid yield fund and an incubation arm to connect traditional finance funding with on‑chain products and services.

Panther Hollow will operate three core investment vehicles. A pre-seed venture fund will back crypto and artificial intelligence infrastructure projects. A liquid yield fund will mix private credit backed by real assets with institutional-grade DeFi strategies to generate yield. A dedicated StarkNet strategy will be offered exclusively to investors in the liquid yield vehicle.

The firm intends to provide active incubation and operational support rather than passive ownership. Panther Hollow is incubating an on‑chain lending, repo and derivatives protocol called Stark Rates, which is being developed to operate on Ethereum, Solana, Canton and StarkNet. The firm also plans accelerators for applications building on each of those blockchains to help projects move from development to on‑chain deployment and administration.

Swartz described the idea as forming after the post‑FTX market downturn, when he and Escobar began accepting equity from founder clients instead of traditional legal fees. The partners plan to take both minority and majority stakes and align capital formation with product development through a model they call “Build, Deploy, Administer, Compound.”

Priority technology areas the firm named include privacy‑enhancing tools, formal verification for smart contracts, quantum resistance measures and interchain intent systems that coordinate actions across multiple blockchains. The firm also expressed interest in projects that work to attract more women into crypto.

Eric Swartz has a background in the Commodity Futures Trading Commission enforcement division and has worked at Framework Ventures and Susquehanna International Group. Jacqueline Escobar is a fintech and web3 attorney with an LL.M. from Penn Carey Law and MBA studies at Wharton. Chief Financial Officer Andrea Perlak brings roughly 25 years of finance experience, including roles at KPMG and the World Bank Treasury.

Swartz described Panther Hollow as “a combination merchant bank, fund complex, and brokerage focused on compliant RWA rails,” and added that the firm operates in many ways like an operating company with an internal investment management business. He also said the firm sees DeFi and traditional finance as complementary and seeks to link the two.

Panther Hollow plans to deploy capital, incubate protocols and run accelerators as it builds its initial portfolio across the four targeted blockchains.