Dexari

Making the best of crypto accessible to a wider user base is a topic we come back to a lot in our work at Prelude.

Interacting with blockchains directly in a self-custodial manner comes with many inherent advantages, such as the robust transparency, lower costs, and absolute lack of counterparty risk. Despite these, however, the retail landscape for crypto continues to be dominated by centralized crypto-first players like Binance and Coinbase or fintechs like Robinhood and Revolut due to their product simplicity and ease of use.

Dexari is a mobile-first experience to challenge the status quo. The app offers a seamless end-to-end experience to access all of crypto’s financial capabilities, beginning naturally from trading but expanding towards lending, staking, and more complex product offerings. It combines the same usability of a product-driven fintech while benefiting from crypto’s incredible pace of product evolution.

Built on Hyperliquid, Dexari looks initially towards power users who stand to benefit most from the DeFi-native exchange’s deep liquidity—Hyperliquid’s volumes and open interest now rival those of the largest centralized exchanges across major assets. The larger opportunity then opens as the product suite broadens with integrations to HyperEVM, Hyperliquid’s decentralized application layer, and later to the rest of crypto’s innovations all while continuing to abstract away the underlying complexities.

The timing is opportune as we see crypto beginning to cross the chasm. In the past it was simply too difficult and inconvenient for most to hold funds in a self-custodial manner and access decentralized applications. Centralized experiences filled the usability gap but would either be at risk of losing user assets or see their product advantage slip over time as they faced red tape navigating compliance and regulatory hurdles in individual markets.

The reality now is that, through a combination of advancements across the infrastructure stack, experiences like Dexari are able to hold the same product standards as a fintech while taking advantage of being crypto-native and global-first. Further, the maturation of stablecoins and associated banking and payment rails, such as Bridge, provide easy lifts for apps like Dexari to interoperate with traditional financial rails by provisioning dedicated bank accounts and spend cards to users.

If crypto is to mark its full impact, the industry will need to provide simpler ways of bringing users onchain. Chuck, Zac, and Sam come from deep experience here, having worked together leading new ventures and products at Binance US for the last several years. We’re excited to partner with them to lead their $2.3m seed round as they embark on their journey to lead the charge in bringing the best of crypto to the masses.