Rift Finance
Protocol that wants to help DAOs deploy governance tokens to deepen token liquidity without having to give up ownership.
| Date | Investors | Amount | Round |
|---|---|---|---|
* | $18.0m | Late VC | |
| Total Funding | 000k | ||
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Rift Finance, established in 2021 by co-founders Austin King and Tyler Tarsi, operates as a decentralized protocol focused on restructuring incentives to enhance liquidity within the decentralized finance (DeFi) sector. King, who previously founded the crypto payment infrastructure firm Strata Labs, and Tarsi, a former quantitative trader with a background from Harvard, identified a significant challenge for Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs): the high cost of maintaining token liquidity.
The company's core business is to provide a more sustainable liquidity solution for DAOs. Traditionally, DAOs have resorted to expensive liquidity mining programs that attract temporary capital and deplete their treasuries. Rift Finance addresses this by allowing DAOs to deploy their own governance tokens from their treasuries to deepen liquidity pools without relinquishing ownership of these assets. The protocol pairs these governance tokens with cryptocurrencies like Ethereum, which are supplied by external liquidity providers. This symbiotic relationship provides DAOs with the necessary liquidity while offering liquidity providers potentially high, diversified yields and reduced impermanent loss risk.
The firm's primary clients are DAOs operating on various Layer 1 blockchains, including Ethereum, Fantom, and Aurora. By facilitating this protocol-owned liquidity, Rift aims to create a more stable financial foundation for the growth and scalability of these decentralized entities. The business model centers on this structured liquidity product, which processed over $50 million in its initial capped beta phase. In February 2022, Rift Finance secured $18 million in a Series B funding round led by Pantera Capital, with participation from other notable investors such as Two Sigma Ventures, Coinbase Ventures, and The Spartan Group. However, as of February 2025, the DApp has been marked as inactive due to a lack of on-chain activity and the unavailability of its official website.
Keywords: Rift Finance, decentralized finance, DeFi, DAO liquidity, protocol-owned liquidity, Austin King, Tyler Tarsi, Pantera Capital, liquidity mining, governance tokens, crypto liquidity, structured liquidity, Web3, token liquidity, impermanent loss, yield generation, decentralized autonomous organizations, Ethereum, Fantom, Aurora
