Polychain Leads Undisclosed Round for Concrete Developer

By Tom Whitfield

Blueprint Finance, the developer of Concrete, secured an undisclosed strategic investment, Hyperithm said on November 9. Polychain Capital led the round, with BitGo, FalconX, Keyrock, Flowdesk and Bullish participating. The announcement gave no investment amount.

How large is Concrete?

Assets in Concrete’s USDT-based vaults exceeded $140 million within one month of the platform’s Binance Wallet integration this year. Blueprint Finance also said Ethereum-based Concrete and Solana-based Glow Finance were processing more than $20 billion in annual transactions.

The two figures cover different metrics: vault assets measure balances in USDT products, while annual transaction volume measures processed activity across Concrete and Glow Finance. Concrete remains a portfolio company of Hyperithm, which invested in Concrete during the company’s early days.

What does Concrete do?

Concrete is a decentralized-finance infrastructure platform for institutions and asset managers managing digital assets across blockchain networks. The vault service works like an automated treasury account: investors deposit stablecoins or Bitcoin, and preset strategies allocate those assets across multiple DeFi protocols.

Concrete says its automated risk-management features are designed to reduce forced-liquidation risk when collateral values swing. The platform therefore combines preset allocation with automated collateral controls.

More recently, Blueprint Finance launched concUSD, its dollar-based token, in partnership with stablecoin infrastructure company M0. The launch adds a token product alongside the vault service and strategy-based protocol allocation.

Who backed the round?

• Polychain Capital led the round. Founded by Olaf Carlson-Wee, an early Coinbase employee, the firm is known for early investments in major DeFi projects including Uniswap, Compound and MakerDAO.
• BitGo is a digital-asset custodian.
• FalconX is an institutional prime broker.
• Keyrock and Flowdesk are market makers.
• Bullish is a crypto exchange listed on the New York Stock Exchange.

Blueprint Finance had previously raised $17 million in total across two earlier rounds. The strategic investment is its third disclosed fundraising round; without a disclosed amount, the announcement does not show how much capital will fund each workstream.

What changes after the round?

Concrete said the round will let it expand partnerships across institutional financial services, including custody, liquidity provision and trade execution. The company will use the funding to expand vault infrastructure, develop new financial products and strengthen partnerships aimed at institutional investors.

The stated priorities span asset custody, liquidity provision and trade execution, three functions that support institutional portfolios. Vault expansion supplies the underlying infrastructure, while planned financial products would extend Concrete beyond its existing deposit-and-allocation model.

Hyperithm Chief Executive Officer Oh Sang-rok said: “For institutional money to move into DeFi, custody and risk management need to be as strong as they are in traditional finance.” He added: “The fact that companies like BitGo and FalconX came in as shareholders means Concrete has met that standard.”

Hyperithm Co-Chief Executive Officer Lee Won-jun said institutions in Hong Kong and Singapore have started looking at on-chain yield products. He said infrastructure such as Concrete needs to be in place first before that capital can come in.

Where does Hyperithm fit?

Hyperithm invested in Concrete from the company’s early days and operates digital-asset investment and asset-management businesses in Seoul, Tokyo, Hong Kong and Singapore. Its portfolio also includes Midas, a real-world-asset tokenization platform; JPYC, a Japanese-yen stablecoin issuer; and Kemet, an institutional derivatives trading infrastructure provider.

The market-structure change to watch is Concrete’s planned expansion across custody, liquidity provision and trade execution. The announcement gave no implementation timetable, leaving those institutional partnerships as the next operational test of the funding.