🧠 Food for thought

Implications, context, and why it matters.

Paxos gains technical scale but buying at a premium without clear metrics

• Paxos paid over $100 million for Fordefi, about a 20% premium to its last $83 million valuation 12. Fordefi booked $4.1 million in 2023 revenue with 34 employees, which hints at either a recent surge or a strategy-driven price 12.
• Fordefi reports over $3 billion in cumulative on-chain volume and claims $100 billion in monthly volume 34. It supports 50+ blockchains, including Ethereum, Solana, Cosmos, and Sui 567. Coverage also spans Aptos, TON, Starknet, and TRON 567. Clients get self-serve custom Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) chain integration (letting users add Ethereum-compatible chains themselves) 567. Fordefi has not disclosed assets under custody (the total value of client crypto held by a custodian) or the type and size of institutional clients 34. Annual recurring revenue is also undisclosed, so investors cannot tell if this deal narrows the gap with Fireblocks (an institutional crypto custody and transfer platform) 34.

Compliance and infrastructure vendors can benefit from Paxos’s regulated DeFi push

• Compliance and risk monitoring vendors targeting financial institutions (firms that help banks plus fintechs meet regulations and detect risky activity) can act now as Paxos opens regulated DeFi access 5891. Fordefi backs DeFi on Ethereum plus Solana, plus Cosmos (an ecosystem of interoperable blockchains) via Osmosis (a decentralized exchange) and dYdX (a decentralized derivatives exchange), as well as Sui 5891.
• RPC node operators are providers of blockchain access endpoints 576. Custody migration system integrators move institutional wallets and policies between platforms. Blockchain auditors review smart contracts and on-chain systems. Match services to Fordefi’s 50+ chains and self-serve EVM integration 576. Then plan capacity for institutional flow on Sui and Aptos, as Paxos clients will transact there 576.