Ithaca Finance

Ithaca Finance, operating as Ithaca Protocol, is a decentralized finance (DeFi) company founded in 2023 and based in Hong Kong, China. The company was established by a former Goldman Sachs partner and an executive from Amber Group, bringing together experience from both traditional finance and crypto startups. The CEO, Dimitrios Kavvathas, has a background that includes leadership roles at Goldman Sachs, Deutsche Bank, and the crypto lender Amber Group. Another co-founder, Panos Mekras, has been involved in the crypto industry since 2016, founding DigitalGen Financial Services and authoring a book on the crypto economy.

The firm is developing a non-custodial, composable options protocol designed to enhance liquidity and efficiency in the digital asset options market. Ithaca Protocol operates on the Arbitrum blockchain, with plans to expand to Base and Solana. The platform addresses key challenges in DeFi options trading, such as liquidity fragmentation, complexity, and high fees. It utilizes a unique auction-based matching engine that processes orders off-chain to reduce blockchain congestion and improve transaction speed. This system aggregates liquidity by combining orders for various instruments into a single auction, which helps in ensuring fair pricing and mitigating issues like Miner Extractable Value (MEV).

The protocol allows users to trade a wide array of options, including vanilla and digital options, as well as complex structured products and strategies. This enables traders to tailor their exposure to specific market scenarios. The platform is designed to be user-friendly, catering to both professional and retail traders through tools like IthacaGPT for beginners and a Telegram Trading Bot for direct trading. By breaking down options into fundamental building blocks, Ithaca aims to make trading more transparent and manageable. On January 31, 2024, the company announced it had raised $2.5 million in a pre-seed funding round co-led by Cumberland and Wintermute Ventures, with participation from other investors including GHAF Capital and Room40 Ventures. The beta version of the protocol launched on May 29, 2024.

Keywords: decentralized options, DeFi protocol, crypto options trading, Arbitrum, structured products, auction-based matching engine, non-custodial, composable options, cross-chain, digital asset options, liquidity solutions, risk management, financial engineering, Dimitrios Kavvathas, Panos Mekras