Franklin Templeton backs $6.8m seed round for stablecoin clearing platform ZeroDelta
Glacis Labs raised $6.8m for its non-custodial ZeroDelta clearinghouse, drawing institutional backers eyeing tokenised securities settlement.
Glacis Labs, developer of the ZeroDelta multichain clearing platform, has closed a $6.8 million seed round led by venture firm Lightspeed Faction, with Franklin Templeton and Coinbase Ventures among the backers. The financing, disclosed on 15 July, marks a sharp escalation in institutional interest in non-custodial settlement infrastructure for stablecoins, at a moment when regulators on both sides of the Atlantic are pressing exchanges and clearing venues to tighten counterparty risk controls.
The round, which also drew participation from Again, Protein Capital and Techni Ventures, represents a substantial jump from the $2.1 million Glacis Labs raised in its previous financing in May 2024. That earlier, far smaller cheque has nonetheless supported a platform that has already processed more than $1 billion in lifetime transaction volume, currently running at an annualised rate of $1.5 billion, according to figures disclosed by the company.
Replacing the trusted intermediary with cryptographic guarantees
ZeroDelta positions itself as a clearinghouse for a multichain world, operating across more than 40 blockchain networks without ever taking custody of the assets it settles. Where a conventional clearinghouse sits between buyer and seller to guarantee that both legs of a trade settle correctly, ZeroDelta performs an equivalent function for stablecoin transfers using cryptographic receipts and atomic delivery, rather than relying on a trusted third party holding funds.
In practice, that means a transaction routed through the platform either completes in full or fails outright, eliminating the partial fills, slippage and bridge-related uncertainty that have dogged cross-chain transfers since the sector’s earliest days. The platform currently supports major stablecoins including USDC, USDT and USDe.
Institutional money eyes tokenised securities
The presence of Franklin Templeton, an asset manager with an established track record in on-chain money market funds, and Coinbase Ventures, the exchange’s investment arm, lends the round a distinctly institutional flavour. Glacis Labs said the fresh capital would fund hiring, expanded operational capacity and go-to-market efforts as it seeks to extend ZeroDelta’s clearing model beyond stablecoins into tokenised securities and foreign exchange settlement.
That trajectory places Glacis Labs squarely within a wider institutional push to build settlement rails capable of handling regulated financial instruments on public blockchains, an area that has drawn increasing attention from custodians, clearing bodies and asset managers exploring how tokenised assets might move without the settlement risk associated with legacy cross-border infrastructure.
Why it matters for European markets
For UK and European institutions weighing exposure to tokenised assets, the emergence of non-custodial, atomic clearing infrastructure addresses one of the persistent objections to blockchain-based settlement: counterparty and custody risk during cross-chain transfers. As Markets in Crypto-Assets rules take fuller effect across the European Union and sterling-denominated stablecoin proposals advance in the UK, platforms that can demonstrate deterministic, all-or-nothing settlement may find themselves better positioned to satisfy risk and compliance teams accustomed to the guarantees offered by traditional clearinghouses.
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