Tristero
Decentralized dark pool exchange for private, large-scale trades.
| Date | Investors | Amount | Round |
|---|---|---|---|
| - | investor | €0.0 | round |
* | $4.8m | Seed | |
| Total Funding | 000k | ||
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Tristero is a financial technology company founded in 2022 by Sam Trautwein, a computer science graduate from Stanford. The company is developing a decentralized dark pool exchange aimed at making crypto markets safer and more fair. Dark pools are private exchanges for executing large trades without revealing them to the public market, thus avoiding significant price impact. Tristero's platform utilizes zero-knowledge cryptography, a technology that allows it to operate a "truly dark" pool where no one, not even Tristero itself, can see the hidden order books.
The company's primary clients are large-scale traders, such as 'whales' and funds, who need to execute substantial transactions privately. By preventing practices like front-running and market manipulation, the platform aims to reduce the invisible costs associated with large trades and redistribute wealth from intermediaries back to investors and company builders. Prior to Tristero, Trautwein was an early engineer at the AI hydroponics firm Plenty.ag, co-founded the YC-backed stablecoin project Carbon, and worked in venture capital. This experience in technology and finance shaped his perspective on improving market structures.
In May 2023, Tristero announced a $4.8 million seed funding round co-led by General Catalyst and Steel Perlot to further develop its technology. The company is headquartered in San Francisco, with a distributed team. As a first step, Tristero planned to launch a stablecoin clearinghouse to lower costs for cross-chain stablecoin transactions. The long-term vision is to apply its cryptographic technology to larger, traditional financial markets.
Keywords: decentralized dark pool, zero-knowledge cryptography, crypto trading, large block trades, financial markets, stablecoin clearinghouse, market fairness, private exchanges, front-running prevention, Sam Trautwein, General Catalyst, Steel Perlot, blockchain technology, fintech, institutional trading, cross-chain transactions, order book privacy, market manipulation resistance, secure trading environment