There’s “stable,” and then there’s Agora stable, and judging by their $50M Series A led by Paradigm, we’re talking the kind of stability that Wall Street suits wish their balance sheets had.
Founded in late 2023, Agora isn’t trying to be another “insert coin here” project that disappears faster than a Solana meme token during a congestion spike. This crew, Nick van Eck (CEO), Drake Evans (CTO), and Joe McGrady (COO), built a platform that doesn’t just mint stablecoins, it institutionalizes them. Think of Agora as the AWS of stablecoin issuance: a white-label infrastructure that lets enterprises go live in days, not months, while tapping into deep liquidity, robust compliance, and actual rails that don’t fall apart in a down market.
Nick van Eck isn’t just the son of VanEck CEO Jan van Eck, he’s the ex-General Catalyst partner who went from deploying capital to building the rails it now flows through. Drake Evans coded his way through Frax’s $1B+ TVL stack with Fraxlend, Fraxswap, and frxETH before he turned 30. And Joe McGrady? Ran ops for Galaxy Digital’s empire, lending, asset management, OTC; he didn’t just manage chaos, he systematized it.
This isn’t three guys in a garage with a pitch deck and vibes. This is a ten-person team with a $130M stablecoin (AUSD) already across 13 chains, including Ethereum, Solana, Arbitrum, Avalanche, and Sui. They’re doing over $5M a day in DEX volume, $10B+ in total transaction flow, and have 50,000+ monthly active wallets. In other words, they built the thing before raising the Series A.
And let’s talk funding. Paradigm led this round, because Fred Ehrsam and crew know how to spot foundational infrastructure when they see it. Dragonfly Capital doubled down. Other early believers like General Catalyst, Hack VC, and Galaxy Digital saw the chessboard before the rest of us caught on. And with partners like State Street, VanEck, and Flowdesk already in orbit, Agora’s not chasing legitimacy, they’re building it into the protocol.
Their AUSD isn’t just pegged, it’s backed 1:1 by cash, U.S. Treasuries, and overnight repos. Custodied by State Street. Audited by PwC. This is the kind of compliance-first design that makes regulators breathe easier and lets institutions sleep at night.
Agora isn’t competing with Circle or Tether, they’re building the plumbing underneath. They’re not in the race; they built the track. And now they’re opening the gates to businesses from Argentina to Southeast Asia, giving them the tools to launch branded stablecoins with shared liquidity, regulatory clarity, and a piece of the yield. That’s not disruption, that’s distribution at scale.
