Crypto Startup Cycles Secures Funding to Develop Clearing Infrastructure

Crypto markets have long struggled with liquidity bottlenecks, higher counterparty risk, and settlement problems due to the lack of a centralized clearinghouse. Cycles, a startup founded by Ethan Buchman, co-founder of Cosmos, seeks to address these issues by launching its protocol that combines zero-knowledge proofs, trusted execution environments (TEEs), and graph algorithms.

The company has secured $6.4 million in funding from Blockchange Ventures, Coinbase Ventures, Compound VC, Primitive Ventures, and angel investors. This brings the total funding to $8.7 million, following a pre-seed round of $2.3 million co-led by CMCC Global and Maven.

Cycles' first product, Cycles Prime, will cater to institutional firms, allowing private netting of OTC obligations without requiring collateral or changes to counterparties. Lynq and FalconX have joined as anchor partners for this product, which is expected to reduce the risk of mass liquidation events like the one seen in October 2025, where over $19 billion was liquidated in a day.

The second product, Cycles Pay, will be a stablecoin payments application that routes transactions through the clearing engine to minimize capital movement between users and institutions. This will aim to provide a more efficient and secure way for cryptocurrencies to be used as a medium of exchange.