eToro, the publicly listed social trading platform, has moved to anchor a $12.5 million strategic investment round in Extended, a nascent onchain perpetual futures exchange built atop the Starknet layer-two network. The deal, which also drew capital from Jump Crypto and early-stage backer Alber Blanc, is more than a routine venture allocation — it is a structural signal about where one of retail trading's most recognised brands intends to compete as decentralised finance matures into institutional-grade infrastructure.
Extended was founded by alumni of Revolut's crypto division and is led by Ruslan Fakhrutdinov, who previously served as Revolut's head of crypto. That pedigree matters in a crowded onchain derivatives market. Revolut spent years building regulated retail crypto exposure at scale, and the team that cut its teeth there now brings operational discipline and product intuition to a sector — perpetual futures — that has historically been dominated by offshore centralised exchanges largely indifferent to compliance architecture. The presence of veterans who navigated Revolut's hyper-growth environment suggests Extended is targeting a segment that wants derivatives access without surrendering the self-custody properties that define true decentralised finance.
The choice of Starknet as the underlying settlement layer is strategically deliberate. Starknet is a zero-knowledge rollup that inherits Ethereum's security guarantees while dramatically compressing transaction costs and expanding throughput — properties that are prerequisite for any onchain venue attempting to match the latency and fee economics of centralised perpetual exchanges. Competing on Starknet rather than the Ethereum mainnet or slower alternative Layer 1 networks positions Extended to offer a trading experience that can credibly challenge incumbents like dYdX or GMX on performance metrics, not merely on decentralisation ideology.
eToro's decision to lead this round is inseparable from the company's self-custody strategy. The linkage, explicitly noted at the time of the announcement, suggests eToro is building an integrated ecosystem in which users can move fluidly between custodied positions on the eToro platform and self-sovereign onchain venues without friction. This is a meaningful strategic evolution. For years, retail platforms and decentralised protocols existed in parallel universes — centralised brokers captured beginners with ease-of-use, while DeFi protocols attracted sophisticates willing to manage private keys. eToro appears to be betting that the next competitive frontier lies in bridging those two worlds, and that Extended provides a ready-made onchain derivatives layer through which it can extend that bridge into leveraged products.
Jump Crypto's co-investment reinforces the round's credibility. Jump's crypto arm has an established track record of backing infrastructure-level projects at early stages, and its participation signals that Extended's technical architecture has withstood scrutiny from one of the market's most demanding quantitative trading firms. For an exchange whose eventual profitability will depend on maker-taker spreads and liquidation mechanics, having Jump at the table as both investor and probable liquidity provider carries material operational implications beyond the headline funding figure.
The broader context amplifies the round's significance. Perpetual futures are the highest-volume instrument in crypto markets, dwarfing spot trading by multiples across most market cycles. Yet the onchain share of that volume remains modest relative to centralised venues, constrained historically by settlement speed, gas costs, and fragmented liquidity. Layer-two infrastructure has eroded those barriers systematically over the past two years, and the timing of Extended's fundraise suggests its founders and backers believe the onchain perps market is approaching an inflection point — the moment when performance parity with centralised exchanges becomes achievable and regulatory pressure on offshore centralised venues simultaneously intensifies.
Fakhrutdinov's Revolut background becomes even more relevant when viewed through a regulatory lens. European regulators have accelerated scrutiny of crypto derivatives, and the Markets in Crypto-Assets regulation — MiCA — has raised the compliance bar for firms serving European retail participants. A leadership team that navigated Revolut's licensing journey across multiple jurisdictions is arguably better equipped than most DeFi-native teams to build a derivatives venue that can operate durably in that environment.
What This Means
The $12.5 million round in Extended is best understood not as an isolated venture bet but as a building block in eToro's larger ambition to own the interface between regulated retail finance and decentralised infrastructure. By leading the round and tying it explicitly to its self-custody roadmap, eToro is signalling that it views onchain perpetual futures as a near-term product category rather than a speculative horizon. For the broader market, the combination of Revolut DNA, Starknet's technical architecture, and the institutional imprimatur of both eToro and Jump Crypto makes Extended one of the more credible new entrants in the onchain derivatives space — and a venture worth watching closely as the line between centralised brokerage and decentralised protocol continues to blur.
Written by the editorial team — independent journalism powered by Codego Press.