Retail buying and selling platform eToro is increasing its decentralized finance ambitions after main a $12.5 million strategic funding spherical for Prolonged, an on-chain perpetual futures alternate based by former Revolut executives. The funding indicators eToro’s newest transfer to bridge conventional finance with blockchain-based buying and selling infrastructure following its latest acquisition of self-custody pockets supplier Zengo.
The funding spherical, introduced by Prolonged on July 2, additionally included participation from Bounce Crypto and funding agency Alber Blanc. Somewhat than serving as a standalone funding, the deal is intently tied to a broader partnership that may see Prolonged’s perpetual futures know-how built-in into Zengo, enabling customers to commerce on-chain derivatives whereas retaining full management of their digital belongings.
eToro Builds a DeFi Ecosystem Round Zengo
The Prolonged funding represents the subsequent part of eToro‘s Web3 technique after agreeing to accumulate Zengo for roughly $70 million earlier this 12 months. The acquisition was designed to strengthen eToro’s self-custody capabilities whereas laying the inspiration for blockchain-native monetary merchandise.
Below the brand new partnership, Prolonged’s perpetual futures engine might be built-in straight into the Zengo pockets, permitting customers to entry decentralized derivatives with out surrendering custody of their crypto holdings. Zengo’s multi-party computation (MPC) pockets structure eliminates the necessity for conventional seed phrases whereas sustaining person possession of personal keys. The pockets already helps token swaps, staking, and decentralized software entry, making it a pure gateway for extra DeFi providers.
Past derivatives, eToro has indicated it intends to step by step broaden the provision of decentralized finance merchandise throughout its broader buying and selling platform. The corporate mentioned the partnership goals to enhance entry to world monetary markets by means of next-generation on-chain infrastructure whereas exploring methods to attach conventional monetary belongings with decentralized buying and selling environments.
The technique additionally comes as eToro appears to diversify its crypto enterprise. The corporate has been increasing past spot buying and selling into infrastructure and self-custody options, reflecting rising demand amongst buyers for blockchain-based monetary merchandise that don’t depend on centralized intermediaries.
eToro leads $12.5 Million Spherical In Onchain Perps Alternate Prolonged
Prolonged Targets Institutional-Grade On-Chain Buying and selling
Prolonged was based by former Revolut staff, together with CEO Ruslan Fakhrutdinov, with the purpose of bringing professional-grade derivatives buying and selling to decentralized markets.
The alternate is constructed on StarkWare‘s StarkEx scaling engine, enabling high-throughput buying and selling whereas settling transactions on Ethereum. Not like centralized futures exchanges, Prolonged permits customers to take care of custody of their belongings all through the buying and selling course of whereas benefiting from execution speeds designed for energetic merchants.
Perpetual futures, generally often called “perps,” have turn out to be the dominant derivatives product in crypto markets as a result of they haven’t any expiration date and permit merchants to take care of leveraged positions indefinitely by means of periodic funding funds.
Since opening public buying and selling in late 2024, Prolonged has steadily expanded its providing. The platform now helps greater than 100 perpetual markets and has reportedly processed over $245 billion in cumulative buying and selling quantity as of June 2026. Future roadmap objects embody spot buying and selling, tokenized real-world belongings (RWAs), unified margin performance, and multi-asset collateral assist.
Conventional Brokers Race Towards On-Chain Perpetuals
eToro’s funding displays a broader business pattern as conventional brokerages more and more embrace blockchain-based derivatives as a substitute of constructing proprietary infrastructure from scratch.
Simply at some point earlier than the Prolonged announcement, Robinhood unveiled its personal growth into perpetual futures by means of Lighter alongside tokenized shares and different decentralized finance merchandise for European customers. In the meantime, main crypto platforms together with Coinbase have expanded their very own derivatives choices, whereas prediction market operators comparable to Kalshi and Polymarket have additionally entered perpetual-style markets.
The rising competitors has fueled what many business observers describe because the race to turn out to be an “every thing alternate”—a platform combining conventional investing, crypto buying and selling, tokenized belongings, derivatives, funds, and decentralized finance inside a single ecosystem.
Perpetual DEXs Proceed to Achieve Market Share
The timing of eToro’s funding coincides with accelerating adoption of decentralized perpetual futures exchanges.
Based on CoinGecko’s 2026 Crypto Perpetuals Report, decentralized exchanges have steadily captured a bigger share of the perpetual futures market. Open curiosity on perpetual DEXs elevated from roughly 3.6% in early 2025 to 13.5% in 2026, whilst centralized exchanges comparable to Binance and OKX proceed to dominate general buying and selling volumes.
That progress is attracting each enterprise capital and established monetary corporations searching for publicity to on-chain market infrastructure. Somewhat than competing straight with decentralized exchanges, brokerages are more and more partnering with crypto-native platforms that already possess the buying and selling know-how whereas contributing regulatory experience, buyer distribution, and mainstream person acquisition.
For eToro, backing Prolonged supplies a direct entry level into certainly one of crypto’s fastest-growing market segments whereas reinforcing its broader technique of mixing conventional investing with decentralized finance. As extra monetary establishments discover tokenized belongings and blockchain-based buying and selling, partnerships between retail brokers and DeFi infrastructure suppliers are prone to turn out to be more and more frequent.
