Lending markets and underwriting primitives.
Credit infrastructure for crypto-native and tokenised real-world assets, including underwriting tooling, isolated lending markets, and the rails institutional credit will route through.
[ Ventures ]Early-stage capital
Early capital, distribution, and market-structure judgement.
Ten Sigma Ventures backs early-stage teams across onchain credit, stablecoin rails, trading and settlement plumbing, and the protocols the firm's trading floor uses daily. The contribution is early capital, distribution from a live trading book, and operator time.
[ 01 ]Thesis
Six areas we underwrite.
Where institutional digital-asset markets still need foundational infrastructure. The firm underwrites primitives, not features. Categories are deliberately broad; the question that decides each investment is whether the firm wants to be a long-dated counterparty to the team.
Issuance, rails, and yield primitives.
Multi-currency stablecoins, yield-bearing primitives, payment rails, and the tokenisation platforms turning balance-sheet assets into stable digital instruments.
The plumbing institutions trade on.
Order routing, OEMS, post-trade settlement, off-exchange networks, and the prime-brokerage layers replacing today's fragmented venue stack.
Operations infrastructure for institutions.
MPC custody, treasury management platforms, onchain accounting, and the audit-grade tooling that makes institutional digital-asset operations defensible.
Movement of value and state.
Bridges, messaging protocols, shared-security layers, and the interop primitives that move value and state between chains without centralised custodial intermediaries.
Validation as a marketplace.
Restaking middleware, actively-validated services, validator infrastructure, and the economic-security primitives layered on top of base-chain consensus.
“The diligence question we keep coming back to is whether we’d want this team as a counterparty in five years. If the answer is yes, the round size becomes a footnote.”Head of Ventures · Ten Sigma
[ 02 ]Operating model
How we invest, and what we bring.
Capital is the entry condition. What teams come to us for is access to a live institutional trading book, market-structure judgement, and operating relationships built across prior careers. The firm invests early, concentrates positions, and engages.
Stage
Pre-seed & seed
First institutional check or alongside a respected lead. Occasional Series A follow-on.
Geography
Global
Asia-led, with active deployment into Europe and the United States.
Beyond capital
Distribution & market structure
Live trading book, OTC counterparty network, custody-partner introductions, multi-jurisdiction regulatory access.
Engagement
Active, not passive
Sized to fit. Baseline for everyone, deeper time for the teams that use it well.
[ 03 ]Ecosystems
Where we operate and back.
The protocols and ecosystems our trading floor lives on daily, and the categories we evaluate teams against. Inclusion here describes operational scope and ecosystem participation — not an endorsement, partnership, or investment relationship except where separately disclosed.
L1 infrastructure
EthereumSolanaBitcoinAvalancheSuiAptosCosmos
L2 & scaling
ArbitrumOptimismBasezkSyncStarknetPolygon zkEVM
DeFi protocols
AaveMorphoUniswapPendleCurveMapleSpark
Stablecoins & RWA
CircleTetherSkyOndoFraxEthenaBUIDL
Trading & settlement
HyperliquidDriftAevodYdXTalosHidden RoadCopper
Custody & restaking
AnchorageFireblocksBitGoEigenLayerSymbioticBabylon
Specific investment relationships and portfolio company disclosures are made under each engagement letter. Inclusion above does not constitute or imply an investment, endorsement, partnership, or commercial relationship beyond what is disclosed in writing.
[ 04 ]Pitch us
Send your deck.
Pre-seed or seed, in a thesis area above. Five business day reply.