Nomura’s crypto subsidiary Laser Digital has made a strategic investment in the Orderly Network, which refers to itself as a ‘decentralized trading infrastructure’ on the NEAR blockchain. The network recently raised a $20 million funding round from venture investors, including Sam Bankman- Fried’s Alameda Research.
Orderly is taking a different approach to most decentralized exchanges (DEXs) that use automated market makers (AMMs). These AMMs tend to leverage simplistic algorithms to enable trading and the bid-ask spreads are not the tightest. Some of that margin is earned by arbitrageurs. Instead, Orderly uses the more conventional concept of market makers and order books. It describes AMMs as being “designed for retail traders and often do not facilitate a more sophisticated trading strategy.
Orderly is not a DEX itself, but provides DEX infrastructure.
“Decentralized Finance (DeFi) is rapidly evolving and Orderly Network strives to fulfil the needs of institutional clients by providing infallible access to digital assets,” said Ran Yi, Co-Founder at Orderly Network. “The seed fund is a vote of confidence that we can fulfil those requirements.”
Centralized crypto exchange WOOFI and NEAR cofounded the project, and the WOOFI DEX went live in October, powered by the Orderly Network.
“Orderly is one of our first investments given its unique position of having access to deep liquidity and an order book matching engine that can accommodate high throughput and rate limits,” said Olivier Dang, Head of Ventures at Laser Digital.
Laser Digital is the institutional digital assets subsidiary of Nomura that was recently incorporated in Switzerland. It is chaired by Steve Ashley, who previously led Nomura’s wholesale division.
It intends to invest in DeFi, centralized finance (CeFi), web3 and blockchain infrastructure. Additionally, it will launch secondary trading for digital assets and investor products.
