fomo Raises $75M to Make Complex On-Chain Trading Simple for Everyone

NEW YORK, NY – June 22, 2026 – Trading platform fomo today announced it has closed a $75 million Series B funding round, a significant capital injection aimed at simplifying the notoriously complex world of on-chain markets for a mainstream audience. The round, which values the company at $550 million, was led by Index Ventures with strong participation from Union Square Ventures and existing investor Benchmark.

The investment signals powerful confidence in fomo’s mission to abstract away the technical barriers—from managing crypto wallets to calculating unpredictable gas fees—that have long kept everyday consumers on the sidelines of decentralized finance (DeFi). Founded in 2025 by a team of veterans from decentralized exchange dYdX and Deutsche Bank, fomo has seen rapid organic growth since its launch last year, amassing over 600,000 users and processing more than $4 billion in trading volume.

“Most trading products aren’t built with the user in mind. They are dull, hard to understand, and make you want to rip your hair out,” said Paul Erlanger, co-founder and CEO of fomo. “Each decision we make at fomo is made to bring our users joy. fomo is accessible, social, and understandable in 15 minutes.”

A Bridge Over Troubled Waters: Simplifying DeFi's Complexity

For years, the promise of on-chain markets—offering broader asset access and user-controlled funds—has been overshadowed by a daunting user experience. Participating has required a steep learning curve, involving non-custodial wallets, seed phrases, network bridges, and fluctuating transaction fees that can deter even motivated individuals. fomo’s core innovation is a platform that handles this structural complexity behind the scenes.

By unifying liquidity from various blockchains and automatically routing transactions, the platform allows users to trade across ecosystems through a single interface and balance. The company claims it can onboard a new user in about 30 seconds using familiar methods like Apple Pay, offering a stark contrast to the multi-step, jargon-filled process common in DeFi. This focus on a frictionless experience is designed to make the decentralized web feel as immediate as any modern internet application.

“fomo seems simple but under the surface there is a lot of technical complexity,” explained co-founder Prashan Dharmesena. “Through behind the scenes wallet generation, key management, gas sponsorship and more fomo takes the burden away from the end consumer.”

This approach positions fomo in a unique middle ground. Unlike centralized exchanges such as Coinbase, which offer a simple user experience but are custodial and have limited asset listings, fomo provides access to a wider array of on-chain assets while allowing users to maintain self-custody. And unlike decentralized exchanges like Uniswap, which offer direct on-chain access but demand technical proficiency, fomo delivers a curated, simplified experience. It’s a hybrid model that aims to capture the best of both worlds.

The Social Engine of Modern Trading

Beyond technical simplification, fomo is making a strategic bet that the future of trading is inherently social. Rather than treating community features as an afterthought, the platform integrates a social layer as a core engine for discovery and engagement. Users can follow top-performing traders, explore trending assets, and track positions through public, verifiable leaderboards.

This emphasis on transparency directly confronts a pervasive issue in the world of online trading: the unverifiable performance claims and dubious screenshots that populate social media. On fomo, profit-and-loss (PnL) metrics are tied to real, on-chain activity, creating a meritocratic environment where performance is provable. This has given rise to what the company calls a “thriving creator ecosystem,” with several traders on the platform amassing over 100,000 followers in just a year.

“Trading is fundamentally a social behavior and an expression of unique insight,” said co-founder Se Yong Park. “In an internet increasingly dominated by automated, synthetic content, active trading represents genuine human conviction and the future of online engagement.”

Top traders on the platform echo this sentiment. “I’ve been a trader for a long time and the fomo team has been able to do something special. They are the first platform that is both performant for traders and accessible for everyone else,” said Rohun Vora, one of the platform's most-followed creators. “It’s the first app I show my friends whenever they ask what to trade. They can track me in real time.”

The Convergence Play: From Crypto to Global Markets

The new funding is earmarked not just for global expansion but also for a significant push into new asset classes, including equities, perpetuals, and prediction markets. This ambition reveals fomo’s broader strategy: to become a single, unified platform where users can act on any market conviction, whether it involves a cryptocurrency, a stock, or the outcome of a future event.

This move places fomo at the heart of a major industry trend—the convergence of traditional and decentralized financial systems. As legacy institutions like the NYSE and NASDAQ explore blockchain infrastructure for asset issuance, fomo is building the consumer-facing interface for this new financial era.

Investors see this as a key differentiator. “Financial markets are going through a major infrastructure transition, but what stood out to us about fomo was the team behind it,” said Julia Andre, a Partner at Index Ventures who is joining the company's board. Andre noted that the founders’ combined expertise—understanding both trader behavior and intuitive product design—positions them to build an experience that feels native to the next generation of users.

This perspective is shared across the investor base. Union Square Ventures brings deep experience in Web3 with investments in Coinbase and Polygon, while Benchmark’s continued support, after leading the Series A, signals confidence from a firm known for backing category-defining consumer apps like Uber and Instagram.

Navigating the Uncharted Territory of Global Regulation

As fomo scales its operations and expands its asset offerings, its greatest challenge may lie beyond product and engineering. The company operates in a global regulatory landscape for digital assets that is fragmented, evolving, and fraught with uncertainty. While its non-custodial model may offer some advantages by not holding customer funds directly, it does not provide immunity from scrutiny.

Expanding into tokenized equities and perpetuals (a type of futures contract) will invite oversight from powerful regulatory bodies like the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), as well as their international counterparts. Each new asset class carries a distinct and complex compliance burden, and regulators are increasingly focused on consumer protection, anti-money laundering (AML), and market integrity within the crypto space.

Successfully navigating this intricate web of rules will be critical to fomo’s long-term viability. The team’s commitment to compliance will be tested as they push to bridge the worlds of DeFi and traditional finance, but their ambition to build a truly global and accessible trading platform depends entirely on their ability to do so.