eToro has taken a strategic stake in Extended, a perpetual futures decentralized exchange built on Starknet, with the funding round also kicking off a partnership between Extended and Zengo, the self-custody wallet eToro picked up earlier this year. CoinDesk reported the round came to $12.5 million, though neither eToro nor Extended confirmed that figure in their own statements.
Extended announced the deal on X, saying eToro "is now a strategic investor" and that the two sides will focus on expanding access to global financial markets through onchain infrastructure. No dedicated press release had been published by either company at the time of writing.
Who built Extended and what it does
Extended was founded by former Revolut employees, including Ruslan Fakhrutdinov, who previously led crypto at the UK fintech. The exchange runs on Starknet and covers more than 100 markets across crypto, equities, FX and commodities, making it a cross-asset venue rather than a crypto-only platform.
That breadth is precisely what eToro says it wants to plug into a self-custody wallet. As the company noted when it announced the Zengo acquisition in April, a deal Bloomberg pegged at around $70 million, the goal is to "accelerate its strategy of connecting traditional finance with on-chain infrastructure." Zengo co-founder Ouriel Ohayon said at the time that joining eToro would let the wallet "expand access to self-custody and on-chain finance." Pairing Zengo's custody layer with Extended's derivatives engine would let retail users trade onchain perpetuals while keeping control of their own assets.
eToro is not alone in this push. Robinhood launched the public mainnet of Robinhood Chain this week, its own Arbitrum-based Layer 2 targeting financial services and real-world assets, as retail brokers race to build onchain product suites beyond basic spot crypto trading.
This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute financial advice or an investment recommendation.
